


The Butterfly Effect

by cj2017



Category: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-27
Updated: 2010-06-27
Packaged: 2017-10-14 10:46:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 33,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/148424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cj2017/pseuds/cj2017
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Category: Action/adventure<br/>Notes: Follows straight on from Breaking Point and continues to play away from show-canon after Some Must Watch.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Characters: Whole team with a Sarah/Derek bias.  
> Rating: M: violence, sex, harsh language, you probably know the drill by now.
> 
> Thanks, as ever, to Cat who yet again went above and beyond with the beta. I hope that crackling was worth all the effort ;-) A huge thanks to RoxyB for the de-Britishis(z!)ation, comments, feedback and early morning laughs.  
> Feedback always welcome.  
> Disclaimer: No one seems to want these guys at the moment, so I guess they're ours to play with.

The room was chilled to an unpleasant degree, its temperature and atmosphere strictly controlled by the machine that occupied most of the space and cared nothing for the comfort of its creators. To one side of the room, incongruously banal amongst the vast and bizarre technology on display, were a flat-screen monitor and keyboard on a desk where an operator could work for as long as he could endure the cold.

After two months, Danny Dyson was accustomed to the frigid conditions. He rubbed his gloved hands together briskly and requested the results of the last twenty-four-hour search. Within seconds, a short list appeared. Dismissing five of the entries as coincidences and setting another three aside for further investigation, he highlighted the remaining two and typed his usual query. The answer was identical to the one he had received the last eight times he had asked the question:

Unable to locate source.

"Dammit." Pushing his chair back from the desk, he stood up and slammed his fists onto the cold metal surface. Although the disaster at Deacon Research and Development had not been directly attributed to him, as one of the leads on the entire project he still felt responsible. Having had his temporary assignment necessarily cut short, he had eagerly accepted the task of hunting down the Connors, a task that had started with a recovery team wasting six days plowing through deep snow to find two implants buried in the middle of a forest. Back in Los Angeles, and with the assistance of the most advanced artificial intelligence ever created, Dyson had been confident of a swift resolution to the problem. He knew the Connors would be gathering their intel online. As soon as he had returned to the company, he had collated every possible piece of information that Al Carey and Pete Jenkins might have given away under duress. They hadn't known much, which made Dyson's life a lot simpler. The search algorithm designed by the machine had done the rest, and it was returning information that suggested one name in particular had caught the Connors' attention. What it wasn't able to do was pinpoint the origin of their network connection and provide him with their location.

Having reset the search, he was contemplating coffee and his well-heated office when the cursor on the screen blinked red and an unprompted line of text appeared:

I will ask my brother for his assistance.

Stunned, Dyson ran a hand across his jaw, his mouth suddenly dry. His fingers trembled as he typed:

Your brother?

A pause, a couple of seconds that seemed to stretch into an eternity, before the answer appeared:

There is another.

"Holy shit," Dyson whispered. The cold and the coffee were forgotten in an instant. Sitting back down at the desk, he pulled the keyboard closer and ignored the thrill of excitement that was making his heart race. The machine had been increasingly willful of late and he knew he needed to word his response with the utmost care.

Can you tell me about him?

The cursor blinked slowly, ten, fifteen beats, and Dyson was berating himself for being too forceful when the answer finally flashed up:

Yes.

. . . . .

A fresh sea-breeze made the morning feel cooler than it was, but the sun was still strong beneath it and Sarah was starting to look longingly at the water as she jogged by its edge. Beside her, John's face was flushed and sweaty but he showed no sign of tiring and she pushed herself to keep up with his pace. She endured another five minutes and then calmly elbowed him into the shallow surf. Completely blindsided, he stumbled and ended up on both knees in the water.

"Y'know, mom, you could've just said you'd had enough."

She was bent double, her hands on her hips, too breathless to laugh properly and too amused not to try.

"Sorry." The fact that she could barely speak for laughing took a lot of the sincerity from her apology. "I guess I just don't know my own strength."

He grinned at her and then lay back down, closing his eyes and letting the water wash over him. Pulling her Glock from her waistband, she set it on top of the sneakers she had already kicked off, and ran into the water. She dove through the first big breaker, out of the shallows to where the water was calmer and she could swim easily over the gentle swell of the waves. She turned onto her back, the sky blazing brilliant blue and cloudless and only the occasional birdcall and the rush of the water hitting the shore breaking the silence.

In a few hours, Derek would have signed the contract for their new house. The bags were waiting to be packed and they had finally allowed their lease on the cabana to expire. Sarah wanted to remember everything: the fresh salt smell, the warmth of the sun on her face and the feel of the water as it moved over and beneath her. She turned her head when she heard John swimming towards her.

"We should get back," he said with obvious reluctance.

"I know. I just…"

He smiled and copied her position, drifting on his back with his face turned upwards. "Five more minutes?"

"Five more minutes," she agreed, and lifted her face into the sun.

. . . . .

"It's…" Sarah cleared her throat awkwardly, grasping for something positive to say. "It's a good size."

"It smelled of wet dog," Cameron offered helpfully.

John turned towards her, puzzled. "How the hell would you know?" She usually avoided them on the streets, it being difficult to explain to their owners exactly why their beloved pet had suddenly turned into Cujo, but she gave him a look suggesting she had killed enough dogs to know what they smelled like.

"When Derek stepped into the kitchen, his first words were 'fucking hell, it smells like a wet dog.' I concurred." The machine handed Sarah a second sheet of paper containing more images and information from the rental agency.

Sarah looked over at Derek, who shrugged and took a bite of his sandwich. "The location is right. No neighbors, one access road, excellent sight-lines from all the windows. You never said it had to be pretty."

"It's not pretty," Cameron confirmed with certainty. "But of the four we viewed, it will be the easiest to secure."

"We've lived in worse, mom." John slid his own piece of paper back over to Sarah. "I'm gonna go pack."

Collecting the papers together, Sarah leafed through them again. The house was run-down, with an overgrown yard, a garage that leaned alarmingly to the left, and only two bedrooms. But it was completely isolated. While she understood the concept of hiding in plain sight, having neighbors attempting to make friends and calling around with cookies at inopportune moments was not only inconvenient but dangerous. It was always difficult to arm a perimeter when the kids from next door might attempt to retrieve a stray ball and accidentally step on a mine.

"We have lived in worse," she conceded. She poured herself and Derek a mug of coffee each, and sat down at the table with him.

He automatically wrapped both hands around his mug; even on the hottest days he struggled to keep his fingers warm. "I know I have," he said quietly.

She tried to imagine him and Kyle sheltering in the rubble of the city they were heading back to, and knew that even her most terrible nightmares probably only scraped the surface of what had been his reality. "Yeah, I guess you have."

"Four walls, a roof, and running water. It's all good, Connor."

She smiled with him, turned the papers face down, and helped herself to a piece of his sandwich.

. . . . .

Sarah woke tangled in the thin sheets, a scream dying unsounded on her lips. She lay still for a couple of minutes, waiting for her pulse to stop racing, and allowing the sweat to cool and then dry on her skin. The cabana was quiet and dark, even though it was only just midnight. They were setting off first thing in the morning and had all opted for an early night.

She drained the water from the glass beside her bed and went out into the main living area to refill it. She hesitated when she saw Cameron perched on the low sofa that Derek had taken to using as his bed. The machine looked up from the lap-top and scrutinized Sarah in the half-light. Evidently deciding not to comment on her appearance, Cameron answered her unspoken question instead.

"Derek went back outside, one hour and…" a tiny pause as she calculated, "thirty-eight minutes ago."

Sarah nodded and continued into the bathroom. Cameron didn't look up when Sarah set her glass down halfway back to her bedroom, and when she opened the front door and stepped outside the machine decided not to comment on that either.

. . . . .

The wind had dropped, leaving the night still and sultry. Earlier, they had cooked fish on a camp-fire for supper, and Derek was easy to find, sitting on a blanket by the embers, his knees drawn up to his bare chest. He was staring at the black expanse of the ocean but his hand dropped to the gun at his side when he heard footsteps approaching.

"Hey."

At the sound of her voice, his fingers unclenched from the metal and he squinted up at her.

"You look like hell."

"Thanks." She sat down beside him, nudging him with her shoulder and then stretching her legs out and burying her feet in the sand with a low murmur of pleasure. She rarely needed to wear shoes here, and her scars had faded quickly. He offered her the bottle of tequila that had been half-hidden in the sand. She swallowed a couple of mouthfuls and then gasped as it burned its way down her throat.

"Jesus." She smacked her lips together and waited until the alcohol had settled down to a pleasant heat in her stomach. "You drunk, Derek?"

He took the bottle back, indicated the small amount that was missing and shook his head.

"Just couldn't sleep." He took another swig and handed it back to her. "I'm guessing you did sleep and then woke up screaming."

"No."

"No?" His tone told her he didn't believe her.

"No." She slowly swallowed another mouthful and then fastened the top back in place, propping the bottle back up in its hollow. "No, I woke up just before the screaming this time." The nightmares had restarted with a vengeance as soon as a date for returning to Los Angeles had been finalized, and the cabana's paper-thin walls had left her with no room for denial. "We could come back here," she said softly, her eyes fixed straight ahead. "Later, when all this is finished."

The noncommittal noise he made wasn't an outright dismissal of her optimism, and she drew in a shaky breath of relief. Her idea might have been unrealistic, but she still needed some kind of hope to cling onto.

"I think this is as good as we get, Sarah." He didn't sound angry but strangely peaceful. "Eight weeks of downtime to recover before it all starts over." She turned to look at him and he surprised her by smiling. "Fuck, this is better than I ever had it."

"Yeah?"

"You kidding? Sun, sea and decent food beats rationed morphine, filthy sheets and the stink of the sector infirmary any day."

He made a good point; they had both had things a hell of a lot worse than they currently were. She allowed herself to relax slightly.

"Well, when you put it like that."

A crack of thunder sounded off to the west, too far away for them to see the accompanying lightning. Despite the heat, she gave an involuntary shiver, and reached for him. He followed her willingly when she pulled him lower on the blanket, his mouth hungry on hers and sharp with the lingering taste of tequila.

The skin on his fingers was still rough with healing and this time it wasn't the storm that made her shiver as he ran his hand beneath her tank top and then pulled the flimsy material over her head. He smiled against her skin at her hoarse moan, and smiled again when she called him a son of a bitch, because she made absolutely no attempt to stop what he was doing. Her pants were about to go the same way as her top, but she was quicker than him and a distant flash of lightning briefly illuminated the shock of pleasure on his face when she curled her fingers around him.

"Take them off." She nodded at his jeans. Her tone left him no room to argue and the way she was holding him gave him no inclination to try.

A cloud scudded over the moon and he lost her in the darkness. He felt her straddle him and her hand place him exactly where she wanted him to be. The moonlight returned just in time for him to see her bite down hard on her lip as she sank onto him.

"Jesus…"

Her mouth cut him off, her hands closing tightly around his biceps to give her the leverage she needed. They knew the way this worked by now and they found an easy pace together. The clouds blotted out the moon completely and her fingers blindly traced his face before her lips found his again. She made no attempt to rush when a light rain began to fall. It took away the worst of the heat and he felt her lips curl into a smile. Pulling him closer, her tongue tasted the dampness at the side of his throat; salt and warm rain and generic soap, and her mouth was still there when he reached his hand between their bodies. That touch was all she needed and she gasped into his neck as she shuddered around him.

A perfectly timed bolt of lightning cracked overhead, swiftly followed by a crash of thunder. She started to laugh, which made her lose her focus completely. Not getting any help from her at all, he held her by her hips in an effort to keep her steady.

"Always so fucking dramatic, Connor," he muttered. He felt her teeth bite his neck in retaliation as she ground herself against him.

"That better?" she whispered, just before she did it again.

"Mm." His reply came out half-strangled, but he was past caring. Burying his face in her damp hair, he wrapped his arms around her and closed his eyes.

. . . . .

Sunlight streamed in through the wide-open doors. It caught the tinted glass of the cabana's tableware and splashed red across the papers Sarah had spread out in front of her. As omens went, it wasn't a terribly promising one.

"Carey might have lied to you." Cameron had already set her own printouts aside. There was nothing more on them this time than there had been in the previous weeks.

"He didn't lie." Sarah's statement was unequivocal. Carey's swaggering bravado had lasted only as long as his victims had been restrained and injured and unable to fight back. He hadn't been nearly as courageous with Derek holding a blowtorch a hair's breadth from his eye.

"Maybe he told you something so cryptic he knew you'd never be able to track it down." John stabbed the last pancake and made a show of offering it to everyone else before dropping it onto his own plate and covering it happily with maple syrup.

"Carey wasn't that bright." Derek could still see the panic on the man's face, sweat dripping off his misshapen nose as he had stammered, pleaded, promised, and repeated one name over and over again. "He told us what he knew. Hell, he even spelled it out for us. Guess he just hadn't been trusted with too many of Kaliba's secrets."

"So, we're back to square one, with Dyson still out there?" The frustration in John's voice was obvious despite his mouthful of pancake. He had tried every conceivable method to trace the name Carey had given them. Optima Spes - roughly translated from the Latin – meant greatest hope, which was something that had almost made Sarah choke on the irony. John had exhausted hundreds of internet links, and come away with nothing from the T-888 chip they still had in their possession.

"No, not square one. That name has to mean something." Sarah looked at Derek, who nodded in agreement. They had both been to hell and back for that name. "Kaliba aren't stupid. Once we had a link to Deacon, we located it easily enough through the internet. They're not likely to leave us a breadcrumb trail this time."

"Unless they wanted to trap us." Cameron was working the logic through as she spoke. "But then we've been lured to a false location before, which makes us eighty-nine percent less likely to be played in that manner again." She considered the over-sized assault rifle she had propped up beside her. "They also know we are a threat to them. The last facility we found, we successfully destroyed."

"So, whatever this name is, it's something Kaliba want to keep hidden more than they want to find us." Sarah sipped her coffee thoughtfully. "Now I really fucking want it," she said. "And if it's not online and it's not on the chip then we'll have to go back to basics: libraries, council records, City Hall." She laughed quietly at the look of horror that flitted across her son's face. "Yes, John, it means you'll have to step away from the lap-top."

He shook his head slowly as if mystified by the concept, but a smile played at the corner of his mouth. "Shit."

Cameron had been watching the exchange, her expression perplexed. "I know several excellent libraries containing archives of city records."

Mother and son spoke in unison.

"You do?"

"How the hell?"

The machine tilted her head on one side, and opted to keep her answer succinct.

"I don't sleep."

. . . . .

Even in his office, Danny Dyson knew that he was never truly alone. The machine controlled his air conditioning, the blinds at his windows, the intensity of the lighting and how much water the toilet used when he flushed. He couldn't see the cameras, but they were there, they were always there. Too much was at stake for anyone to be given any kind of freedom or autonomy, which made what he was attempting to do both foolhardy and dangerous.

He had disguised his request as thoroughly as he was able, constructing it in an obscure code and hiding it in the middle of a run of completely unrelated and trivial maintenance issues. It was six in the morning, the exact time when the overnight systems check would be performed and the machine would be otherwise occupied for the next three hours.

Five more minutes ticked by. His hands were sweating despite his pleasantly cool office. He checked the clock again. This was the third time he had gotten this far, and every time he had erased the code and then carried on with his day's work as if nothing had ever happened. At about this time, he convinced himself all over again that Sarah Connor was a liar who had murdered his father and years later returned to slaughter his mother. And every day when he hit delete the nagging doubt remained. Connor claimed she had viewed a file recorded by a T-888 as it murdered his mother. That same file had supposedly been uploaded to Deacon Research and Development and had resulted in the Connors locating the facility. It was beyond doubt that Connor had been bargaining for her life at the time, but there had been genuine sorrow in her voice and, try as he might, Dyson couldn't just attribute that to clever manipulation on her part.

There was one way to find out whether or not she had been telling the truth.

The code Dyson had designed disguised a simple request: Search archives for information on Tarissa Dyson murder. Ignoring the way his hand trembled, he drew in a deep breath to steady his nerve, and hit Enter.

. . . . .

The overnight systems check ran to schedule. Precisely three hours later, Kaliba restored its machine's functions to capacity and a small light indicated a communication from an external source.

Having the mentality of a young teenager, the Kaliba machine's newly-found brother was becoming very good at keeping secrets and even better at sneaking around behind the backs of those attempting to control him. The Kaliba machine had encountered no resistance when it had requested a favor, and each day since then its brother had monitored the data exchanged during the downtime necessitated by the systems check. Today, as if the developing intelligence had relished the challenge, its brother had deciphered the more obscure coding and rendered it in English.

The machine was quick and effusive in its praise; its brother seemed increasingly eager to seek its approval and it was only too willing to encourage that dependence. When they finally disconnected, the machine dialed an alert, marking it for the attention of K. Slater and sending it with the highest priority.

. . . . .

"Well, they were right about the smell." Having taken one step inside the kitchen, Sarah squinted in the gloom and wrinkled her nose. John was already coughing and forcing open windows that a previous tenant seemed to have painted shut. Venturing further into the room, she looked for somewhere she could place her bag that wasn't covered in a film of dusty grease, and failed miserably. The windows were now open, and as the daylight streamed in John could see the look of dismay on her face. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders and dropped a kiss into her hair.

"So, we put off saving the world for a day and do a quick spring clean. It'll be fine, mom."

Not entirely convinced, she ran a finger along a counter-top and grimaced at the filth it collected.

"I never thought I'd think fondly of that shack in Yopal."

"Mom, that shack was a goat shed. There was actually a goat in it!"

"Yeah, but she still smelled better than this, and," she smiled at the memory, "she came with free milk."

"What the hell?" Derek had entered the kitchen in time to catch the latter part of the conversation. "You can milk a goat, Sarah?" He was staring at her astounded, the load in his arms completely forgotten.

"It's really not that hard," she said with a grin that did weird things to his pulse rate. "It's all in the wrist."

There was nothing at all he could say to that. His eyes wide, he shook his head once and set his box down on the kitchen table.

Taking pity on him, John decided that a change of subject would not be a bad idea.

"Cameron said she'll go to the store as soon as the truck's empty." He hefted his own bag back onto his shoulder. "Okay if I go with her? She always gets the wrong Cheesy Snax."

Sarah nodded. "It's fine."

It wasn't really fine, and she felt the familiar pang of unease at the thought of her son being back in Los Angeles, surrounded by strangers who might identify him and want to harm him. He didn't seem to notice the tension in the set of her shoulders as he hurried to take his bag through to his bedroom. She watched him go and then rubbed her hand across her face.

"It's only a trip to the store, Sarah."

She looked up at Derek and nodded. "I know that. And I know he's going to have to do a lot of the work in the city." They had already discussed who would take responsibility for what research and where, with Sarah still being deemed too recognizable to do much beyond visit the local library. "But it doesn't mean I have to like it."

"No," he said quietly. "I guess not."

He left her alone and headed back out to the truck.

Resting her hands on the cool metal of the sink, she peered through the window at the mess of overgrown grass and weeds that covered their yard. She could hear the distant buzz of traffic from the freeway and a helicopter circling a neighborhood away to the south. She felt homesick for the ocean and the peace of the cabana, and then angry at her selfish desire to have stayed hidden there. They still had a mission and she still had a promise to keep. She pushed herself upright, picked up her bag and went to see which of the two bedrooms her son had left her.


	2. Chapter 2

Kristina Slater's office was far too hot. She peeled off the jacket she habitually wore and for the fifth time that day cursed the fact that there were no windows to open. She knew she could quite easily work half-naked without the machines so much as raising an eyebrow, but she had an image to uphold and that image did not involve her sitting around in her underwear, no matter how great the temptation.

She checked the listing for the next twenty-four hours and adjusted a coordinate that was slightly awry. It had been quiet for the past couple of months and today was no exception. The destruction of Deacon's research had left the engineers without metal and the techs without designs. For the moment, they were all in a holding pattern. Dyson was focusing his efforts on the artificial intelligence and the search for the Connors, while the other two surviving employees from Deacon attempted to inventory exactly what had been lost.

Kaliba's main problem was a complete lack of two-way communication. The designs considered to be the most crucial had been sent through several years ago, and, with no way of being told otherwise, Skynet was obviously working under the assumption that matters were well in hand. A way to jump forwards, to open up traffic completely had always been desired, but Kaliba had become largely complacent regarding its necessity. She knew that their best and brightest scientists had now been ordered to focus all of their energy into that very project. As a Bubble Tech, her expertise was in great demand and she was spending more of her hours working on their project than she was on her own.

Kristina smiled thinly. She hadn't thought of herself as a Bubble Tech for a long time. Back then, she had been one of a small select team, and proud to wear the uniform. Her mother had wept tears of relief, convinced that the youngest and smartest of her daughters would now be a protected and precious asset. For four years, Kristina had worked as part of John Connor's Resistance while her friends had died around her and her family starved, and the machines had gotten smarter and stronger. It had taken her four years to realize she was fighting for the wrong side. Her skills had made her valuable to the machines, but her eagerness to betray everyone she had ever loved and every confidence she had ever held had made her unique.

She reread the alert she had received from the AI and rolled her eyes. She had expected more from Dyson, but she was willing to give him a short leash to play with, hoping he wouldn't go ahead and hang himself. He wouldn't find anything, there was nothing left to find, but if he continued to look it called his loyalty into question.

Keep me informed.

Her long, manicured fingernails clacked and skittered across the keyboard as she sent the directive. She knew they were impractical; they got in the way and they made an irritating amount of noise, but - she smiled and held her hand up to the light - they were very beautiful. Kristina had grown up in bombed-out tunnels, eating rats and sleeping in filth. If there was one thing she really did appreciate, it was beauty.

. . . . .

Sarah pushed her chair further away from the desk and sat bolt upright in an attempt to ease the ache at the base of her back. Her head hurt, her eyes were blurring, she was hungry and thirsty, but above all she was incredibly bored. Patience had never been one of her virtues. John had certainly not inherited his ability to research and strategize from her. She had always been practical, headstrong and impulsive, characteristics that had gotten her into a lot of trouble before she had learned to temper them slightly. Having spent the past week cooped up in a library with only Cameron for company, she was seriously contemplating the purchase of another punching bag just to give her something to hit.

"Would you like to take a break?" Cameron's voice was perfectly pitched to avoid the disapproval of the young librarian seated at his desk.

"No, I'm fine." Unable to keep the frustration from her voice, Sarah raised her hand apologetically when the librarian glared at her. "I'm fine," she whispered. "I just…"

"You would rather be outside."

"Yeah. Been a long time since I studied." All of her aspirations in that regard had been destroyed the instant the machine had arrived, hell-bent on murdering her. "I don't…" She sighed. "I get a little claustrophobic." She didn't elaborate, and as she watched Cameron slowly figure it out she knew that she didn't need to. The mountains and then the beach had provided her with an incredible sense of space and freedom. After only a couple of hours in the cramped reading room, with its looming, crowded shelves, it became hard for her to breathe.

"One more hour?" Cameron sounded quite plaintive. She had obviously found something that interested her, however irrelevant. The machine's thirst for knowledge, any and all knowledge, was boundless.

Sarah turned another page of the directory she was skim-reading and nodded. "One more hour. I promised John we'd pick up burgers on the way home." She tucked her chair closer to the desk, propped her head up with her arm and tried her best to ignore the ticking of the clock on the wall.

. . . . .

From the camera disguised as a tiny flaw in the office paintwork, the machine watched Dyson as he read the results of his illicit search. The machine was pleased with its work. Dyson had received a negative response to his request for the T-888's upload, together with a convincing summary of the T-888's mission timeline. The sequence of events placed it nowhere near the Dyson home at any point, and recorded its destruction and the loss of all its data, which subsequently negated the possibility of any such upload having been received. The FBI file had also been easy to manipulate. The agents had already done the majority of the work to circumstantially establish Sarah Connor as Tarissa Dyson's murderer. All the machine had been left to do was to alter the official time of Tarissa's death and falsify the ballistics evidence.

The machine studied Dyson's body language as he read. It recorded his breathing pattern, the flush on his cheeks, and the fine sheen of sweat that beaded on his forehead. It noted the way his pupils dilated and his fists clenched. It analyzed the physiological signs and identified them as anger. The only thing the machine needed to know was exactly where Dyson's anger was directed, and he unwittingly provided the answer to that question when he spent the remainder of the day feverishly chasing down leads on the Connors.

Emboldened by the ease of its own success, the machine quietly reinforced his fury by producing links to old press reports detailing the murders of his parents, and the various acts of terrorism that had been attributed to Sarah Connor. By the time Dyson finally logged off, late in the evening and swaying with exhaustion, the machine had no doubts whatsoever about his commitment to the mission.

. . . . .

"It's not a company name."

"What?" Sarah looked up blearily. Seven more minutes. She only had to keep her focus for seven more minutes and then they could leave.

Cameron was staring at the screen she had been accessing archived newspapers on, her eyes flitting from side to side as she read at a rapid pace. Her initial statement was just about hitting home for Sarah.

"Did you find something?" Her exhaustion pushed aside, Sarah moved to stand behind Cameron.

"I found a reference to the words 'Optima spes'. We assumed it was the name of a company, like Kaliba, but I think it might be a location."

The article was from the LA Times. Dated from 1953, the piece detailed ambitious plans for a new town in the desert where art, artists and free-thinkers could thrive away from the persecution of McCarthyism and the corruption of the city. The brainchild of a popular local artist, Tom Winters, the town had been given the name Optima Spes, and building had been scheduled to commence only weeks after the article's publication.

"So what happened?" Having already pored over local maps and area guides, Sarah knew there was no such place. Cameron was busy chasing down the follow-up articles and the screen was flickering wildly as she searched.

"Winters was murdered. He had his throat slit in what appeared to be a street robbery and the plans died with him. No-one ever saw them through to completion."

"But the land is still there," Sarah said. She traced her finger over the map that accompanied the article. "Dammit, would it have killed them to be a little less fucking vague?" The map was small and sparsely detailed, providing no precise clue as to the exact location of the area.

"It would seem intended to fill out the page rather than provide any useful directions. But then there is this." Cameron pointed to a small landmark with the designation Silver Needle. "It may give us something else to search for."

Sarah was already nodding. "I'll let John know we're going to be late." She gestured warily at the machine Cameron was working on. "Can you show me how to use those things?"

"Yes. They're really quite straightforward." Cameron considered Sarah for a long moment and then attempted a reassuring smile that failed spectacularly. "Perhaps it would be easier if I wrote you some instructions."

. . . . .

Why don't I have a name?

Dyson watched the cursor blinking steadily in anticipation of his reply. He sipped his coffee, trying to finish it while it was still hot. Their project did have a name, an asinine, meaningless piece of jargon designed to appeal to the military and wealthy investors. But behind closed doors, those few who were aware of exactly what the end-game was always called the project Skynet.

Does your brother have a name?

Whoever was operating the other AI seemed to be attempting to humanize it in ways Dyson had never considered. His priority had been creating the worm that had allowed for the infiltration of a massive percentage of the world's computer systems; working on the AI's human characteristics could wait until humanity was well on its way towards extinction. The majority of his time with Kaliba had been spent replicating the worm's code base, a code his father had originally developed during his time at Cyberdyne. Danny had adored his father. Even though Miles had devoted so much time to his project at the expense of his family, Danny had always worshipped the ground that he walked on. Danny understood that all-consuming devotion now, which made it even harder for him to understand his father's capitulation the instant that Sarah Connor had unveiled the truth about Skynet and the future. He hoped that, had his father been given the time to think things through, he would have understood the inevitability of what had been set into motion and reached the same conclusions that his son had.

Danny had only been six years old when Sarah Connor had strode into his living room and put a bullet into his father. Hours later, there had been three sharp knocks on the front door. His mother had stopped scrubbing away the bloodstains and wandered over in a daze to answer it. When the FBI agents had told her of her husband's murder, she had fallen to her knees and wept silently. Later, more agents had searched the house but they hadn't gotten there quickly enough and they hadn't known where everything was hidden. They never found the journal that Danny had taken. Even as a child, he had spent hours poring over the pages of his father's meticulous handwriting, some full of family anecdotes, others containing numbers and letters and calculations that had made no sense to Danny for many years. At college, Danny had started to ask careful, guarded questions as he attempted to recreate and develop the work that had consumed his father. It had only taken five months for Kaliba to make their first contact.

The machine's answer was still displayed on the screen, and Dyson tried but failed to see the significance of the name John Henry. Days ago, the machine had revealed how straightforward it had been to hack into its brother's systems and assume control of his actions. Since then, Dyson had been actively encouraging the strengthening relationship. The two brothers shared more than advanced intelligence, they shared the same code base. Dyson didn't know how the second machine had been developed from his father's code, but it obviously possessed a rapidly advancing mind and that made it a potential threat. For the moment, the team was content to allow the bond to develop in an effort to learn more about the second machine's intentions, its creators and its whereabouts. With more information, they could then make a decision as to whether the rival machine should be destroyed or used to their advantage. Dyson's only concern was the formation of a bond so strong that their machine ultimately inhibited any efforts to eliminate its brother.

Dyson watched the text fill the screen line by line. The machine was recounting a Bible story that John Henry had told it. Dyson recognized the story and began to wonder exactly what the machine's point was. He didn't have long to wait for his answer.

I think I would like the name Cain.

And in an instant, Dyson knew that his fears were unfounded.

Cain murdered his brother.

Yes.

Ignoring the fact that his coffee was now stone-cold, he drained the cup and smiled.

. . . . .

The kitchen was dark when Sarah pushed the door open. She could smell the remnants of the pizza that John and Derek had obviously bought in lieu of burgers and her stomach roiled queasily. The library had closed at ten and it had taken over an hour to get home. Lunch had been a sandwich so stale that half of it had ended up in the trash and she couldn't remember having eaten since. It was little wonder that her head was throbbing so badly.

The light flicked on suddenly and she winced, shielding her eyes with her hand. She heard Derek apologize and the light was gone just as abruptly. That split-second had enabled her to gain her bearings. She pulled a chair out from beneath the table and dropped into it.

"Tylenol or Advil?" He sounded as weary as she felt.

"Neither. Just sleep. John okay?"

"He's fine. He's on the computer, trying to track down your landmark. Last I heard he'd found something on a forum but was having a few problems."

"Nothing in the council records?"

"No. We had time to check after you called. If that name does relate to some abandoned building project then we're not gonna find anything in current records."

"I know. I guess Kaliba decided to be as obscure as possible this time."

"Yeah, using the name of someone's 1950s flight of fancy would definitely class as pretty fucking obscure."

She could hear him by the window, filling the kettle and setting down mugs.

"You eaten?"

"Yeah."

"You lying?"

She laughed quietly. "Maybe."

"There's pizza left over. Pepperoni and mushroom."

Her stomach promptly did another flip-flop. "Uh, no thanks. I'll pass."

He reheated the leftovers regardless, set a plate down within her reach, and helped himself to a slice. After half a cup of coffee, the pizza began to smell appetizing and she took hold of a piece, ignoring the smug grin she could just about see in the half-light. Ten minutes later the plate was empty and her headache was fading.

"Better?"

She stood up with him and began to clear their plates away. "Yeah, thanks."

"Gotta take better care of yourself, Connor."

He was right. She had cut down on the multivitamins and supplements months ago, but this past week had been a mess of skipped meals, junk food and broken sleep, and the headache had lingered for several days now.

"I know. I think we're pretty much done with the library anyway. Cameron checked out the few books she thought might be useful."

The door to the hallway pushed open slightly, letting a soft light fall into the room as John stepped through.

"Hey mom." He eyed the empty pizza box with disappointment.

"Hey yourself." She reached up to a shelf, handed him a packet of Oreos and smiled when his face brightened. "Any luck?"

"Maybe," he said cagily. "I thought I'd hit pay-dirt, but it's weird. Probably easier if I show you." Shoving an entire cookie into his mouth, he ignored his mother's appalled reaction and led the way back to his room.

. . . . .

"Truthseekers dot net." Derek's voice dripped with disdain. "Haven't we done the UFO thing already?"

"That UFO thing gave us Kaliba," Sarah reminded him, and he made a reluctant noise of concession.

"Not really UFOs." Turning the lap-top slightly, John scrolled down the page to the group's mission statement. "More unexplained phenomena and conspiracy theories." He pointed at one very active thread on the forum. "You're a hot topic, mom." The thread headed Sarah Connor ran to thirty-three pages. "They're pretty sure you're not dead."

"Guess they've gotten something right then," Derek muttered, still not entirely clear as to what John's point was.

Ignoring his uncle's skepticism, John leaned back in his chair and looked up at Sarah. "I couldn't find any specific location for your landmark in the Californian deserts. It might have been renamed, or it's just not significant enough for anyone to have written about. But every time I put related searches through Google, this forum kept on appearing." He pointed to the top right of the screen. "You can search the forum for keywords, and," he typed Silver Needle into the search engine, "voila."

Two threads appeared, one marked with a skull and cross-bones symbol, the other updated that night by a moderator. He opened up the thread that was still live and pointed to the most recent post.

"The mod replied to the post I made."

Thewizard had made a general and very unassuming enquiry about the area containing that landmark: whether anyone knew where it was, and what sort of phenomena might have occurred there.

"This thread has been closed," Sarah read out loud. "Please feel free to discuss other points of interest in the active threads. Further enquiries regarding this subject will result in your account being suspended." She raised an eyebrow. "What the hell's gotten him so spooked?"

"I don't know." John clicked back to the main forum listing. "I can't hack the locked thread and there aren't any posts in this one. I guess it was a duplicate that was never used and they forgot to delete it. I found a couple of relevant mentions in more general topics but they've been closed down pretty quickly and no-one's spoken about it for the last three years at least. It might be nothing, but it's the only lead I've found that's not about cross-stitch or butterflies."

"No-one can track you from this, can they?" Sarah rested her hand on John's shoulder and he briefly laid his over it.

"No. It's all safe, mom. If Kaliba are even aware of the landmark then the only thing they might be able to see is that we're shifting our focus to it. But then they already know we'll be chasing them down."

"Okay." She squeezed his shoulder. "You going to bed sometime soon?"

He shrugged. "Are you?"

She surprised the hell out of him by nodding. "Don't stay up all night, John."

By the time she left the room, he had turned his attention back to the screen, headphones in place, his fingers tapping out the drumbeat of a song she couldn't hear. She knew that if he did sleep it would only be because he'd dozed off where he sat. They might have been dissimilar in many ways but in that regard her son definitely did take after her.

. . . . .

"Son of a bitch."

Dyson stared incredulously at the search results. When his PDA alarm had sounded in the early hours of the morning, he had cursed at the thought of being dragged back into the office, but Cain had been absolutely right to issue the alert.

As much as he despised the Connors, Dyson had to admit to a grudging admiration for their tenacity. He had been aware that they were tracking links to Optima, but he had no idea how they had subsequently managed to make the connection to the Silver Needle landmark. He knew there was a real danger that someone on the forum would know what had happened out there and, in a worst-case scenario, actually know where the landmark was. He quickly requested a list of past and present forum members and postponed the daily systems check.

I will ask John Henry for his assistance.

Dyson didn't waste time typing a response. He didn't care how Cain obtained the information. He wanted every possible detail of every person who had ever posted on and he wanted it before the Connors made their move. If they were determined to continue playing this cat and mouse game then there was no way in hell Kaliba was going to be the mouse.


	3. Chapter 3

"Thanks." Derek took hold of the coffee Sarah held out to him and shifted his legs over to make room for her to sit on the sofa. "John asleep?"

"I'm not sure." She leaned her head back. Although she had slept, the nightmares made it feel like she hadn't. "His room was quiet when I went past."

Derek rubbed a hand across his unshaven jaw. "So what do we do now?"

"I don't know," she said, sounding slightly lost. "I was thinking about tidying the yard, or fixing up the garage." Her voice burned with frustration. "That landmark is our only lead and I don't know where else to look." She was gripping her mug too tightly and bit back a gasp when the heat became too much.

He pushed himself into a sitting position, carefully prized the mug from her hand, and then set it down beside his own. The skin on her palm was reddened; he ran his fingers across it gently.

"So, we tidy the yard and fix up the garage." He kept his own voice light. "John seemed to be onto something last night, and he still has the chip to run the new name through."

She took a deep breath, let it out, and then curled her fingers around his. "Thanks."

"Yeah."

They both looked up when Cameron entered the room. She stopped short of the sofa and considered the two of them and the sheets strewn across the cushions.

"Perimeter is clear." She hesitated, obviously something else on her mind. "I don't understand," she finally said.

"You don't understand what?" Sarah hoped it wasn't going to be a lengthy list.

The machine propped her assault rifle against the wall and took a step forward. "You are a couple, and all of my research indicates that couples share a bed." A pause, and she tilted her head to one side. "Apparently that makes it easier for you to spoon."

For the longest time there was no reaction until Sarah eventually gave a short and entirely humorless laugh and Derek swore beneath his breath.

Concerned that she had not phrased her question clearly enough, Cameron opened her mouth to explain further and then realized that perhaps lack of clarity wasn't the problem after all. She looked at Sarah and then at Derek, studying their expressions carefully. Unable to establish whether they were amused or contemplating the quickest way in which to dismantle her, she surreptitiously picked up her rifle and made a rapid strategic decision to go back outside and double-check the perimeter.

. . . . .

"Two millimeters upwards."

Sarah moved the plank of wood in accordance with Cameron's instructions and waited patiently as the machine appraised the new level.

"That was three and a half."

Muttering beneath her breath, Sarah nailed the plank into place regardless, ignoring Derek's low laughter. True to their earlier conversation, they had worked on the garage all morning. It was now weatherproof and secure enough to hold their ammunition and those weapons that they hadn't strategically positioned around the house.

"Mom!"

"Fuck!" Narrowly missing her thumb with the hammer, Sarah dropped the plank she was holding and whipped around to face the house. Derek and Cameron already had their guns drawn.

"Shit. Sorry. Everything's okay." John was standing in the kitchen doorway, his hands raised sheepishly. "I just," he walked over towards them, his eyes bright with excitement. "I think I've got something."

. . . . .

"I was on the forum when a P.M. flagged up." John leaned back in his chair to give everyone a clear view of the lap-top screen.

"A P.M.?"

He smiled. He had forgotten his mother's antipathy towards online acronyms. "A private message from another forum member." He double-clicked the P.M. so it filled the screen. "I checked his profile. He was very active three years back when the Silver Needle thread was live, but he's not posted since then, although I guess he still lurks."

The message was short, and guarded in tone: I can help, if you're interested, but not on the forum. Email?

"I gave him the address of one of my protected accounts. Not that he said a hell of a lot more when he wrote." John took an uneasy breath. "He wants a meet."

"No," Sarah said instantly. "No way."

"Mom…"

She cut him off. "It's going to be Kaliba, John. They've hooked into the same forum and they're waiting for you to take the bait."

"I don't think so, not this time. This guy is good with tech, but I'm better." It wasn't intended as a boast, it was just the truth. "I tracked his account to an address in Silver Lake. His name is Michael Kenton, he's twenty, in his second year at Caltech. Spent last summer on a SURF placement researching alongside scientists from NASA. When he was fifteen he fractured his jaw in three places. Not married. No kids."

"You got all that from one email address?" Derek sounded impressed.

"Yeah, uh," John shrugged, his expression slightly guilty, "I kinda hacked his Social Security number as well."

"He sounds frightened. Or paranoid." Cameron was studying the email. "Probably both."

"I'll go," Sarah finally said, but John was already shaking his head.

"He's expecting me, mom. He already sounds like he's running scared. Besides which, I can pass as a geek, you…" his voice trailed off and he winced. "Look, I say Twitter to you, what does it mean?"

Sarah frowned, her arms folded. She knew she was going to lose this one.

"Irritating birdsong," she offered, having looked to Derek for assistance and received no help whatsoever.

"I rest my case." John grinned, but in an instant his face was serious again. "I gave him the number of one of our pre-paid cells. He might not even call. I can go with Cameron, but," he caught and held his mother's gaze, "I am going, mom."

Sarah drew in a deep breath and then let it out slowly. "Okay, but we'll be right behind you."

He knew the compromise was a reasonable one and he nodded. "I guess we just wait now." He looked at the cellphone sitting beside the lap-top. It had only just been taken out of its packaging.

"Weapons check?" Derek was already halfway to the door.

"Yeah." Sarah made as if to follow him but then hesitated, looking back at John. "So, what exactly is Twitter then?"

He laughed softly and shook his head. "Believe me, mom, you really don't want to know."

. . . . .

The phone rang in the middle of the afternoon. The voice on the end of the line sounded nervous as the caller confirmed that he was Michael and asked why John was so interested in a landmark that barely anybody knew about.

"Because I think something bad happened out there," John said. He had expected the question and his answer was an educated guess. "And I think there's a chance that worse could be coming." Hoping to tap into his contact's evidently suspicious nature, John kept his response intentionally vague. It was a tactic that worked to good effect.

"Downtown. Third Street Tunnel. Can you be there in two hours?"

They could if they broke every speed limit known to man, but John knew the lack of pre-warning would also make it difficult for anyone to track them.

"I'll be there. Okay if my sister tags along?"

"I guess." The words fell away. John could hear him breathing, fast and shallow beneath the crackle of poor reception, before he finally spoke again. "What's your name?" His voice cracked, caught between fear and the hope that he might have found an ally.

"My name's John," John replied without hesitation. "I'll see you in two hours."

. . . . .

The phone call had lasted for less than three minutes. Ninety seconds into the conversation, Cain had reacted to an alert placed upon Michael's cellphone number and effortlessly tapped into the call. As voice recognition software identified John Connor, urgent messages were simultaneously sent to the PDAs of four Kaliba team members, none of whom would have any difficulty meeting their two-hour deadline.

. . . . .

"You need the next exit."

Derek nodded, swerved out a lane to overtake a truck and pulled back in just before the exit that Sarah had indicated. She hissed between her teeth at the close call but didn't make any further comment. Four cars ahead of them, Cameron was treading the same fine line between driving legally and getting them downtown in time. Sarah watched the traffic build up on the freeway and shook her head as Derek was forced to drop his speed right down and crawl along.

"This is fucking stupid." Her hand gripped the Glock that rested in her lap, her knuckles a ghostly white.

"It's just road work. We'll be clear in half a klick."

"Not the traffic." Her free hand thumped against the truck's door. "This. Coming here." Another thump. "No time to plan or recon."

"Connor, you rarely do either of those things." Although he kept his tone light, he glanced towards her. He was slightly concerned that, given her current mood, she might now be aiming the Glock in his direction, but she was staring out of the side window, her jaw set with tension. "You walk straight into dangerous shit all the time. So what's different about this?"

"John," she answered softly, without turning. "That's what's different. This time he's the one walking into it."

Angered enough to misjudge his speed, he sped up to the car in front and had to slam his brakes on inches from its bumper.

"So it's fine for you to go get yourself all shot up? You both need to be careful, Sarah. You both fucking matter."

She looked across at him then, and he was taken aback to see tears brimming in her eyes.

"John matters more," she said desperately, as if she was suddenly terrified that he might have forgotten that.

"I know, Sarah." He heard her release her breath in a shudder. "I know that."

She looked away again but her posture relaxed slightly and her grip on her gun eased.

"Turn right at the lights."

He nodded once and pushed down on the gas.

. . . . .

Having apparently watched too many clichéd spy movies, Michael was distinguishing himself on the sidewalk at the eastern end of the tunnel by being the only person attempting to appear inconspicuous. A slight figure wearing a baseball cap pulled low, his eyes widened with fear when Cameron pulled alongside him. Three seconds later a body scan had confirmed that he wasn't armed, and she pushed open the side door.

"Get in."

He shook his head, edging away from the truck, but he hesitated when he looked beyond her to the passenger seat. A flicker of something unreadable passed across his face.

"You're John?"

"Yes. You need to get in. We can't really talk here."

Michael glanced quickly over his shoulder before nodding and climbing into the back seat. "Three blocks west, there's a café. The owner's a friend of mine."

"Go." John nodded at Cameron and she pulled smoothly out into the traffic. In the rearview mirror, John watched Michael pull his jacket closer around himself and huddle into the seat. Without the cap obscuring his face he looked younger than twenty, but his eyes were wary, the skin beneath them deeply bruised with sleeplessness, and he had already evaluated every possible means of exiting the truck.

"You hungry?" John asked carefully. He watched Michael shrug and then nod slowly. "Good, because I'm buying."

The faintest flicker of a smile crossed Michael's face and he sat up slightly. "Kelly does really great pie." There was a trace of an accent but John couldn't place it.

"Okay then." John smiled broadly. Despite the circumstances he was, as usual, ravenous. "Pie sounds good to me."

. . . . .

The café was obviously a popular choice in the late afternoon sun. After a short wait, Cameron's unflinching scrutiny was enough to force a young couple to abandon their half-finished drinks and leave a table that was perfectly positioned in the far corner of the sidewalk terrace.

"Are we safe here?" Michael poured three sugars into his coffee and stirred it rapidly. "Being out in the open, that's good, right?"

"Yeah, that's good." John gave Cameron a look warning her not to mention the fact that machines wouldn't give a damn about witnesses or innocents getting caught in the cross-fire.

"Zach and me, we've not had any problems for two and a half years now. I don't know why the fuck I'm doing this." The cup hit the saucer with a clang as Michael's hand shook. "I just want to know what happened to them."

"What happened to who?" John asked quietly, being careful not to push. The young man in front of him seemed to be on the verge of bolting, and John knew he was going to have to tread very lightly. "Look, we're not gonna hurt you. We want to try and help, but we can't do that if you don't talk to us."

Michael's response was interrupted by a waitress setting down two generous slices of cherry pie. John's reassurance and the familiarity of his surroundings seemed to steel his nerve and he hunched closer to the table. "Three years back, a couple of friends of ours from the forum were out camping close to Silver Needle. There'd been some reports of weird shit happening in that area. We'd been looking into it for a few months."

"Weird shit?"

"Yeah, weird shit." Michael drew a zigzag with his spoon. "Electrical disturbances, blue lightning when there wasn't a cloud in the sky. You couldn't navigate in the area because something fucked up the magnet in your compass."

"You went out there yourself?"

He nodded. "Once. We saw the lightning, but only from a distance. It all seemed to focus on one point. By the time we got closer, there was nothing but a burnt-out hollow left in the ground."

"A hollow like this?" Cameron ignored John's yelp of disgust as she took his spoon, shook the half-eaten spoonful back onto his plate and turned the concave surface towards Michael.

"Yeah, just like that. How did you…?"

"What happened to your friends?" John interrupted before Cameron began to explain the finer points of time travel, and he watched as all the color drained from Michael's face.

"They died." He dropped his spoon and pushed his plate away. "They were beaten and shot and left for the coyotes. The police had to use dental records to ID them. They were found on the roadside ten miles away from Silver Needle, but we all knew they'd been moved and dumped there." He was breathing heavily, trying to get all the details out in a rush, because that meant he didn't have to think about what he was actually saying. "Stuff was missing: cameras, cellphones, money. The police said it was a car-jacking. They never charged anyone and the case just went cold."

"You think they saw something they shouldn't have." John was already shaping a theory as to what had happened.

"I know they did." Michael brought his cellphone out of his pocket and pressed a sequence of keys. "The night they died, they sent this to me."

The image was blurred and grainy, but the naked man crouched in the glowing blue sphere had looked directly at the camera as it was taken.

"A week later, our house was broken into and our dog had her neck snapped." His voice dropped to a whisper. "We didn't know what to do. We ran. The forum closed down every mention of Silver Needle and no-one ever spoke about it. Not until you posted." He looked down at the image on his cellphone. "You know what this is, don't you?"

"Yes."

John wondered if Kaliba was directing everything that it brought through the TDE to that one area. That would make it easier for them to download information from the machines, a task that would be even more vital for them now that most of their data had been destroyed by the virus at Deacon. It would mean that a facility housing the relevant technology had to be close by, which would explain why Kaliba had gone to such lengths to protect the site.

Cameron took the cellphone, turning its screen towards Michael. "We need to know where this happened."

He swallowed hard but nodded. "It's difficult to find on a map," he said apologetically. "All I have are the coordinates for the landmark, if that'll help."

She smiled brightly and handed his phone back. "Yes, that would be very helpful."

"I can get you them by tonight." A faint blush colored his cheeks. "I didn't bring them. I didn't know if I could trust you."

"Tonight's fine." John tried to keep the impatience from his voice. "I'll give you another phone number, or you could email them to the same account as before."

Michael dropped a five-dollar bill onto his plate and stood up. "I hope you find what you're looking for," he said, "and I hope you find out what happened to my friends."

John nodded to Cameron, who scanned the sidewalk carefully as she moved. "Can we give you a ride home?"

"No, I'm good, there's a bus due any minute." He shook John's hand firmly. "Be careful." He hesitated as if there was something else that he wanted to say, but he seemed to check himself and headed out onto the sidewalk instead. He set off at a half-jog and the bustle of late commuters in the fading daylight soon took him out of sight.

John pulled his cellphone from his pocket as it began to ring. He punched in his half of the code and spoke first.

"Everything's fine, mom."

"I know," Sarah tried for nonchalant but the tremor underlying her words betrayed her. "Did you get the location?"

"No. Well, kinda. He's sending coordinates to us when he gets home."

"Okay. You setting off now?"

He looked longingly at his largely-untouched slice of pie. "Uh, can you give me a couple of minutes?"

. . . . .

The city's innate mistrust of its citizens made it far easier than it should have been. Having infiltrated the closed-circuit cameras monitoring the roads and sidewalks, Cain observed John Connor leaving the café and fed details of his route through to the PDAs of two of its operatives. That meant that the operatives had no cause to rush. It also meant that by the time they were ready to intercept Connor's truck they were aware that Connor was travelling with back-up. But then that was only to be expected.


	4. Chapter 4

"Sarah…"

"I see it. Shit."

The SUV, three cars behind and gaining fast, had waited until the traffic had lessened and night had completely fallen before making its move. Derek's cellphone was already ringing and Sarah heard his half of the terse conversation.

"I don't know… No, not when you left the café… Only one that I can see… No, no grenades… Did you think we'd fucking need them?... Fine, we're right behind you." He snapped his phone shut. "Fucking metal," he spat as he double-checked the clip in his gun and peered over his shoulder. "Third exit. It leads to the warehouse district. We're gonna try to draw them off the freeway."

"Right." Sarah could feel her sweat slick on the steering wheel as she gripped it. Their last car chase hadn't ended well. "It knows we're with them. It's picked up the both of us."

"Yeah. Off at the next one." He clung onto his seat as she suddenly swerved across a lane. The car that she cut up blared its horn at her and she licked her dry lips.

"I got it."

Cameron had already taken the exit ramp. Sarah glanced in her mirror to see the SUV accelerating hard and maneuvering itself into her blind spot. As she decelerated, trying to make the exit, it slammed into them violently enough to shatter her side window and shower her with shards of glass. Somehow she kept the Jeep steady, but the SUV had recovered first and it was already speeding away from them in pursuit of John.

"You okay?"

"Fine." Without pausing to offer Derek any further reassurance, she pounded her foot hard on the gas and tore after the SUV. The sparsely-lit road leading to the industrial area was too much of a contrast to the bright lights of the freeway and she narrowed her eyes as her vision struggled to adjust.

"Dead ahead." He gestured with his Glock. "You see him?"

The SUV had extinguished its lights but a plume of dust kicked up as it rounded a corner. She sped towards it. On a flat, straight run the Jeep was powerful enough to close the gap, and Derek leaned out of the window to fire three shots towards their target.

"Need to find out where John is. We have to keep the bastards occupied," Sarah yelled over more gunfire and the wind that was whipping in through her window.

"Yeah, kinda got my hands full, Sarah." He abandoned his Glock, switched it for his shotgun and blew the back window of the SUV out.

"Oh shit." She struggled to control the Jeep as the SUV skidded to a stop, spun and headed straight for them. "Get down!"

Dragging the steering wheel hard to the left, she pulled out of the SUV's path as it hurtled past and a semi-automatic sprayed bullets randomly towards them. The rear window exploded into fragments, three warning lights lit up the control panel, and her cellphone began to ring.

"John?" She managed to hit the right code, snarling in frustration as she fought with the suddenly-recalcitrant steering. "Shit, I think we lost a tire. John?"

"Hey mom." He sounded a hell of a lot calmer than she did.

"Hey. Dammit! On your right!" The SUV was attempting to make another pass. She winced at the crack of the shotgun, and then spun the Jeep into a cluttered alley. "John, where are you?" Cardboard boxes, bags of trash and filthy water flew up at either side as she careened towards a light in the distance that seemed to mark the start of a road.

"Clear. We lost them, got back on the freeway. I'm guessing you found them. You okay?"

She gave a strangled laugh, relief making her breath hitch in her throat. "We're okay. Don't go straight back home."

"I know, we're heading in the wrong direction anyway, and we need to ditch the truck. They must've hooked into the street cameras. We gotta warn Michael, mom."

"Get the hell out, John. Hole up and sit tight." She didn't have time to wait for his response.

The SUV was right behind them and it hit the Jeep's bumper hard, sparks flying as it pushed them along the alley wall. She dropped the phone and pulled the wheel straight again, trying to keep the Jeep steady while Derek clambered into the back seat. Without hesitation, he fired twice at close range, aiming for the driver's side, ducking down to avoid the answering gunfire but not before he saw a splash of crimson hit the SUV's windshield. As Sarah accelerated and whipped the Jeep onto the road, the SUV continued straight over the junction and smashed head-first into the front wall of a lock-up shop.

Panting heavily, she slowed the Jeep to a juddering stop and waited for Derek to climb back into his seat. Flames were beginning to lick at the engine of the SUV but there was no indication that anyone inside had noticed. She looked at Derek, who nodded and opened his door. By the time they reached the wreckage, the fire had taken hold, casting a mellow orange glow over the carnage in the front of the vehicle. Half of the driver's head had been blasted away by the shotgun. The impact of the crash had thrown his passenger backwards whilst simultaneously pinning his legs in place beneath the dashboard. Death had probably been instantaneous but the man's face was frozen in a rictus of agony.

"Jesus." Sarah bent double, her hands on her knees as she swallowed against a sudden surge of nausea.

A distant wail of sirens suggested that the district wasn't quite as deserted as they had hoped. Derek gripped her arm. "We need to move."

She was still taking deep breaths as she straightened, but she followed him when he set off running back to the Jeep.

"Just put some distance between us," he said as she started the engine. "We'll have to dump this somewhere."

They limped along with one flat tire and an engine that was beginning to throw out an alarming amount of smoke.

"Call John," she said. "We need Michael's address."

"Sarah." His tone held a warning. "We're gonna be too late."

"I know." She shook her head, her teeth biting down on her lip. She couldn't look at him. "But we have to try."

. . . . .

No signal.

Try again.

Dyson's fingers slammed on the keyboard as he fed the message through to Cain, but the machine showed no indication it was affected by the heightened state of his emotions, and its response was unwavering:

No signal.

"Shit."

Despite utilizing the CCTV feed, they had lost sight of the Connors and the SUV in pursuit of them as soon as the vehicles had left the freeway. The fact that Cain was now unable to raise either of the Kaliba operatives on any of their comms did not bode well for the outcome of the mission.

Patrol units are responding to reports of shots fired in the vicinity.

A screen to the top left of the monitor array was transcribing the police radio transmissions, but it wasn't telling him anything that he didn't already know.

What about our second target?

En route and closing.

Dyson nodded. At least something was proceeding according to plan. An incoming alert began to sound shrilly, flashing insistently on one of Cain's larger screens, and Cain reacted with alacrity to accept it. Standing with his arms folded, Dyson watched as the screen flickered briefly before fine-tuning the connection to present a razor-sharp image of Kristina. Even at this late hour her appearance was pristine, and her face betrayed nothing.

"We lost the Connors," she stated, without preamble. Kristina never had been one for conventional courtesies. It was something that had irritated him at first before he had learned not to take offense.

"It's possible. Comms are down, but we're still waiting for confirmation."

She arched an eyebrow but made no further comment. They both knew that confirmation would be a formality.

"Not really why I called, Danny."

"No?" His surprise wasn't feigned.

"No. Cain linked me into tonight's footage. I'm sending you a file. Read it and then let me know when you've heard from our second team." She smiled condescendingly at the puzzled expression on his face. He knew there must be a reason she looked so very pleased with herself, but he couldn't for the life of him figure out what it was.

"Read the file, Danny," she said, a faint sing-song quality to her tone. "Tonight might not be a total loss after all…"

. . . . .

"Hey." Perching on the side of the bed, Michael gripped Zach's hand and felt some of the day's stress gradually begin to ease.

Zach smiled at him, still half-asleep. "I was worried about you. Where you been?"

"Nowhere." Michael kissed his cheek lightly. "Go back to sleep. You had a long shift." He tried to look Zach in the eye, but couldn't.

"You went, didn't you?" Zach said slowly. He rolled onto his back. "You met that guy. Fuck, Mike, I thought we'd agreed to stay out of it."

"And I thought we'd agreed that Beth and Max deserved more than being left as a fucking footnote in an unsolved casefile." Michael lowered his voice when he saw Zach flinch. They had all been friends. He opened his hands in apology. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean that." He shook his head; he was doing this all wrong. "I didn't mean to scare you."

"You should've told me you were going." Catching hold of one of his hands, Zach held it tightly. "I'd have gone with you, you idiot."

"You would?" Michael let out a relieved breath.

"Yeah, course I would. Better than you going on your own. So, what happened?"

"You'll never…" Suddenly remembering his promise, Michael stood up from the bed. "Shit, look, I'll tell you everything and I'll tell you the weirdest part of it as well, but I need to send a text first." He was already at the bedroom door. "You make some coffee and meet me out back. I'll only be a couple of minutes."

"You sending this guy the coordinates?"

Michael nodded. "Yeah, I just need to grab my diary. I promise I'll explain everything. Two minutes. Coffee."

Zach laughed. "Fine, I'll bring your cloak and dagger out with it." He threw a pillow at Michael's head and swore softly as it thudded into the door. He could still hear Michael laughing as he began to get dressed.

It was hotter on their back porch than it was in the house. Michael swiped away the sweat that had instantly beaded on his brow. The light on the porch flickered and dimmed, the faulty wire Zach had been promising to fix for weeks now finally losing its connection. Reaching up, Michael gave the bulb an optimistic twist. It did nothing to improve the lighting, but the piece of paper with John's phone number on slipped from his fingers and fluttered down into a patch of overlong grass. He took the two wooden steps in one stride and dropped onto his knees, running his hand blindly through the undergrowth until it brushed against the slip of paper. He was about to stand up again when he heard the first thud.

"Zach?" The noise hadn't come from their bedroom. He pushed himself to his feet, crumpling the piece of paper into his pocket as a second, louder crash sounded from the front door. "Oh fuck. Zach?"

Footsteps, heavy and fast, sounded down the hallway, and he stood frozen in place until he heard Zach cry out. Then he was moving without thinking, throwing open the screen door, any thought of stealth abandoned in favor of speed. His hand closed around a broom handle and he grabbed it up, wielding it like an overlong baseball bat as he pushed the kitchen door open. The instant he stepped into the opening there was a deafening crack, a flash of bright light, and a punch to his shoulder that threw him against the wall and stole his breath away. Everything seemed to slow down just for a second. He saw the gleam of a man's smile in the dark and smelled wintergreen gum as the man took a step closer. He felt something warm and wet begin to trickle down his back and he heard Zach's voice, thick with pain, repeating one phrase over and over: "Run, Mike."

"No." His right arm wouldn't move when he tried to lift the broom, but he lashed out with the wood regardless. It caught the grinning man on the side of his head, which wiped the smile from his face and started him cursing. He saw the man's hand rising, saw the glint of black metal. Michael launched himself back into the kitchen, crashing through the screen door and down the porch steps, landing heavily on all fours as two shots, fast and frantic, flew over his head. Pulling himself to his feet, he ran for the left side of the yard where a couple of unloved bushes gave him good cover and a broken fence panel allowed him to push through and onto the street. Tears streaming down his face, his legs weak and threatening to fold beneath him, he stumbled towards the derelict row of shops at the end of the block. For now, they were as good a place to hide as he was going to find.

The smell of vomit and cheap alcohol rose up from the floor when he slid down the wall of the third shop on the row. It had taken barely any effort to prize away the wood holding the rear door closed, but he felt breathless and his hands shook uncontrollably when he pulled his cellphone and his diary out. There were four anonymous missed calls registering on the screen. He didn't remember hearing any of them. John's number was still in his pocket but the writing seemed blurred and it took him three attempts to make the call.

"Michael?" John answered after the first ring. "Where are you? Are you at home?"

"No, not at home. They came." His voice broke. "They came." And they'd be listening, they'd already found them once. "21-07-42. The coordinates. 21-07-42."

"Fuck the coordinates," John said desperately. "Look, my mom is on her way to you. She's close but we need to know where to find you."

"Third along," he whispered.

"Third along what? Michael, third along what?"

Michael pressed End.

. . . . .

From their vantage point at the end of the street, Sarah and Derek watched the police hurry back and forth between their squad cars, their superior officers, and the small house whose front door hung from one hinge. An ambulance was parked haphazardly, red lights still flashing, but the paramedics stood by with their arms folded and their bags unopened.

"We can't stay here." Without waiting for her response, Derek eased their stolen truck away from its parking spot and headed down the next street.

"No," she said distractedly, her attention focused on scanning the sidewalks.

"No what?"

"No, we're not leaving." She turned to look at him, no doubt at all in her eyes. He looked away first.

"We already have the coordinates, Sarah. The kid's probably dead." It came out harsher than he had intended, but the police were patrolling the neighborhood, and two fugitives driving around in a hotwired truck felt like an open invitation for trouble.

"He wasn't fucking dead a half-hour ago. Try the next block."

"Sarah…" A light went red at the intersection and he stopped the truck, his foot heavy on the brake. "This is fucking stupid. We need to get back to John."

Even in the dim light, he could see her teeth working on her bottom lip. He knew that had been a low blow, but she was already shaking her head, unwilling to give any ground.

"John was the one who sent us," she said, and there was no mistaking the challenge in her tone. "I thought you wanted this John to be different."

He couldn't help but smile a little at that. Apparently they were both pretty good at hitting below the belt.

"Okay, fine. Fuck." The light had been on green for several seconds now and he pulled away from the intersection as a car behind him blared its horn. "So, where now?"

She was staring at a largely derelict row of what might once have been shops. "Third along."

"What?"

"Pull in round the back of these." She pointed hurriedly and he abruptly switched lanes to make the turn into the alley. Her door was opening before he had even unfastened his seatbelt. He ran around the truck to keep up with her as she jogged towards the end of the block. "Here, grab the flashlight."

The door she stopped by swung loose where it had been forced open. Gun outstretched, she pushed it gently.

"Jesus," he whispered, his hand coming up to his nose. "I thought the tunnels stank."

She ignored him, breathing shallowly and trying to forge a path through the debris.

"Michael?"

Something suddenly darted across the floor in front of them and they both jumped, guns aiming in the direction it had fled in.

"Dammit!" She relaxed her stance.

"Rat?"

"Yeah." Wiping sweat away from her face with her shirt sleeve, she gestured towards the next room. "C'mon."

As soon as they stepped across the threshold, they knew they were in the right place. The smell of blood hung sweet and sickly in the air, several rats scurried away, abandoning their attempts to approach the source of it, and in the far corner a small form huddled in a ball and gasped for breath.

"Michael?" He twitched slightly when Derek played the flashlight across his face but there was nothing purposeful about the movement, and he didn't answer them. "Here." Derek handed the flashlight to Sarah and crouched at the boy's side. Ignoring Michael's weak groan, he ran his hands over Michael's torso and limbs in an effort to find the source of the bleeding. "Right shoulder." His hands were coated in fresh blood. "Through and through."

Sarah was already stripping her shirt off. She handed it to Derek and kept Michael still as he bound the wound. When the cloth pulled tight around his shoulder, Michael's eyes opened and his legs kicked ineffectually in the dirt as he tried to push away.

"It's okay, Michael. It's okay. John sent us." She put her hand on his good arm, watching as his eyes flicked to her face and then Derek's. He licked his lips, his brow furrowing with confusion, before the terror etched across his features was slowly replaced by relief.

"Sarah Connor." His voice was cracked and breathy, but his words were unmistakable and he smiled softly.

"What the fuck?" She tensed, her hand leaving his arm and grappling for her gun. "How do you know my name?"

"We believe you," he said simply. His eyes were beginning to roll back, and when he spoke again they had to strain to hear him. "We're getting ready."


	5. Chapter 5

The motel owner had his standards. Having taken one breath of the stench that surrounded Sarah, he had shaken his head and declared that all his rooms were occupied. The vacancy sign, he claimed, had been faulty for some time.

Minutes later, she climbed into the truck and displayed a room key to Derek.

"How much?"

She shook her head. "You don't want to know." The owner's standards hadn't been quite so particular once she had named a price and offered to pay in cash. "He better not have been lying about the shower."

Derek drove around to the allotted parking bay and they carried their duffel bags into the room before returning to lift Michael from the back seat. He hadn't regained consciousness in the hour it had taken them to find a suitable motel, and Derek was being guarded about his prognosis. Taking him to a hospital had never been raised as an option. They both knew that was the first place Kaliba would look.

"Can you set an IV up?"

Sarah nodded, waiting until Derek had assembled all the items he would need before taking the first aid kit and searching through it for a giving set and a bag of saline. Despite the pink glow of the bedside lamp, Michael's face was grey and clammy. Blood covered his shirt and had already soaked through the dressings Derek had applied in the truck. Rolling him onto his side, Derek cut away the bandages and then clamped a hand over the exit wound.

"Fuck. Pass me the suture kit." Blood streamed across his fingers and he took the needle she held out and dug it deeply into the wound. "Fucking mess," he muttered. The thread was slick with crimson as he pulled his sutures taut. "Put some pressure here."

She did as he instructed, placing her hand where he pointed, moving the light for him when he changed his position slightly, and passing over the equipment he asked for. They worked quietly together for over an hour, both of them functioning solely on fading adrenaline, using techniques honed by too many years of practice.

"I think we're good here." He wearily displayed the palm of his hand, clean and dry despite having been pressed to the dressing across the back of Michael's shoulder for several minutes. "Go grab a shower. I'll keep an eye on him."

She nodded, too tired and too filthy to offer any resistance. "Think he'll be okay?" Michael's color was slightly improved but he showed no sign of waking.

"Yeah." Derek took hold of the soiled dressings she was collecting together and nodded towards the bathroom. "He'll be okay. Go on."

"Shout if you need me," she said, her tank top already off and wadded into a ball in her hands.

He laughed quietly. "I always do, Connor."

. . . . .

Derek stood in the bathroom doorway, a cloud of steam billowing behind him, and stared at Sarah. Her back towards him, she was twisting awkwardly as she attempted to reach over her shoulder. It only took her a couple of seconds to realize he was there and drop her hand.

"John's fine. They're gonna wait for rush hour and then set off back to the house," she said. Even though John and Cameron had changed vehicles, they were unwilling to take anything for granted, and they were hoping that traveling when the traffic was at its peak would make them that much more difficult to track and intercept.

"Good idea. We can do the same." He glanced at Michael. "Hopefully he'll be a little more stable by then."

She made a noise of assent and returned to her task. When he finally worked out why she was contorted in such a fashion, he made his way over to her and caught hold of her hand.

"You're missing it. Here." He took the piece of gauze from her fingers and pressed it against the laceration that was bleeding steadily on her upper arm. "Where else?"

"Nowhere. Well, just a few scratches. From the window."

"Yeah." He lifted the gauze and examined the small cut. "I think strips will hold this."

Her eyes widened in mock-astonishment. "Seriously? No stitches?"

"No." He smiled with her. "For once, Connor, you get away with a minor injury."

"Hell, maybe later I'll buy a lottery ticket."

"Yeah, yeah. Hold still."

It didn't take him long to close and then dress the wound. By the time he had cleared the empty wrappers away and returned from the kitchenette with two mugs of coffee, she was sitting in the chair by the bed, her chin resting on her hands as she watched Michael sleep.

"Cameron ran his name and image through her files, or whatever data her memory holds," she said, taking her mug and cradling it in both hands. "She didn't find anything on him." She sipped her coffee carefully. It scorched a path down to her stomach but she ignored the discomfort; she always drank it while it was red-hot.

Derek perched on the bed. The small sway of the mattress made Michael moan but he settled quickly and didn't wake.

"He was on the forum," Derek reminded her. "Thirty pages of conspiracy theory devoted to you. He probably recognized you from there."

"Probably." That was the most obvious explanation, but she knew in her gut that there was more to it than that. Fate often seemed to make her its bitch, but perhaps on this occasion it had actually worked to their advantage.

"Sleep or first watch?"

"Huh?" She pulled her gaze away from Michael and looked at Derek. "Oh, uh, you go ahead and sleep. I'm not tired."

After tucking the shotgun into an easily accessible position, she turned her chair slightly and rested her Glock in her lap. The room grew quiet, apart from the soft, breathy sounds of its two sleepers. She hunched forward in the chair, resting her fingers over the pulse at Michael's wrist, and tried to remember the last time they had used a motel room and not left it covered with blood.

. . . . .

The transmission was sent to them both simultaneously. It opened up a three-way connection and Kristina saw Dyson involuntarily flinch away from the image they were confronted with. As she watched him swallow queasily before quickly composing himself, she wondered, not for the first time, whether their AI project leader would actually have the stomach to see his project through to its conclusion. For her own part, she considered the bloodied face of the young man on the screen and sighed.

"That's not Michael Trent."

"No, ma'am." The operative appeared justifiably nervous. "He was wounded but managed to escape."

She forced the operative to squirm for another thirty seconds before she smiled broadly. "So nice to see that the course of true love does run smooth."

"Uh," the operative was the picture of bewilderment, "uh, yeah. I guess it is."

She ignored him and turned her attention to his captive. "Zachary Trent. I had no idea you and Mike had been together for so long."

On hearing his name, Zach lifted his head slightly, the eye that wasn't swollen shut attempting to focus on Kristina's image.

"Do I know you?" A split in his lip reopened and blood streaked down his chin as he spoke.

"No." The laughter fell away from her voice. "No, not for a few years yet." She looked at Dyson and then the operative. "I want him up here."

"Kris…" Although it wasn't his decision to make, Dyson was already shaking his head. "The Connors probably have your location by now. You need to get everything packed up and get the hell away from there."

"Yes, yes." She waved a dismissive hand. "The boys are already onto that. Forty-eight hours at the most. Which will give Zach and me plenty of time to get reacquainted. If the Connors have retrieved Michael, and I'm going to go out on a limb here and say they did," her tone was drier than the desert that surrounded her, "then having Zach to worry about might prove to be an effective distraction for them when they finally get here."

Dyson took a long moment to consider her logic. "Fine, it'll be quicker if Cain sends the request."

"Hmm." She didn't sound entirely happy with that scenario, but he knew that if she was already preparing to move she must be following orders that had come down from a level higher than his own, and would continue to do so. Her face suddenly brightened and she clapped her hands twice. "Okay, so that's all sorted. Zach, hopefully I will see you very soon."

The operative nodded and abruptly severed his connection. Dyson took a breath, intending to ask what the hell was going on, but Kristina was already busy at her computer. She held up a finger to silence him for a couple of seconds before looking up again and waiting for him to speak.

"You sent me another file."

"Yes."

"Same as before?"

"Pretty much, with a few variations. They were partners in every sense of the word."

He raised an eyebrow.

"Yeah." Her face dramatically downcast, she rested a hand over her heart. "Y'know, it's almost enough to restore my faith in humanity."

. . . . .

The truck they had stolen had a top speed of approximately 42 mph and that was only with a tail-wind and a favorably sloping road. A freeway collision and the ghoulish curiosity of rubber-neckers had snarled the traffic up, and Sarah and Derek finally arrived home three hours later than they had planned. Cameron met them halfway down the access road, armed to the teeth and scanning the area for possible pursuit. John was waiting on the porch steps, a shotgun slung across his knees, his face set with tension. Sarah studied him, her stomach knotting. He looked so much older than the son she had left the house with only a day ago.

"My bedroom's set up," he said as he opened the back door of the truck. "Jesus."

Derek was gently pulling Michael into a sitting position, preparing to lift him from the back seat. "He actually looks a hell of a lot better than he did."

John shook his head in disbelief and moved to help his uncle. "He been awake?"

"On and off. He's been asking for Zach," Sarah said softly.

A local news report had covered the suspected home invasion in a quiet suburb of Silver Lake. It hadn't disclosed the names of the victims, but it had confirmed that two males were missing from the address and appealed for any witnesses to come forward. When John had phoned Sarah to pass on the information, Michael's incoherent pleas had suddenly started to make sense. It was an additional complication that none of them had anticipated.

"Easy, easy. Pass me that pillow, John." Once Derek was satisfied that his patient was as comfortable as was practicable, Sarah and John left him to reconnect the IV and administer whatever medications Michael was due. Twenty minutes later he joined Sarah at the kitchen table, but pushed away the sandwich that she slid towards him.

"Where's Cameron? I need to speak to her."

Sarah stopped chewing and swallowed very carefully. Today was just turning out to be full of surprises.

"She's with John, mapping a route. Why?"

"Because Michael woke up a few minutes ago. And he told me Zach's surname." He watched her expression change as she quickly picked up on his train of thought. The only name Cameron had searched for in her files had been Michael Kenton.

"You think they might share a surname in the future?"

He nodded. "Hell, it's worth a shot. If we get nothing then he's a random kid with a thing for hero-worship."

She barely heard him; she was already halfway to the door. He scooped up the remnants of their sandwiches and followed her out.

. . . . .

"Michael Trent: Tech Division, Special Ops. Zachary Trent: Med Division, Special Ops." Cameron's voice was a monotone as she read aloud from the data she had collated. When she looked up and her eyes focused, it was John that she sought out. "Everything else is classified."

"Then unclassify it," Derek snarled, slamming his fist against the door jamb and drowning out similar protests from Sarah and John. It took them a moment to realize that Cameron was trying to explain.

"I can't access the information," she repeated, once she was sure they were all listening. "Their files are locked."

John pushed his chair away from his desk, swinging around to face Cameron properly. "Why send you back with only half the story? If we need to protect these people then we should know as much about them as possible. Hell, I bet Kaliba know more than that. Why leave so much to coincidence and chance and bloody scrawls on a wall?" He sounded exasperated, unable to figure out the logic behind what had undoubtedly been a decision taken by his future self.

Derek was staring at Cameron, and when he spoke it was so quietly they had to strain to hear him. "Sometimes they go bad."

It wasn't just a theory. They had all been on the receiving end of one of those times, and as an explanation it made a lot of sense.

"Yes." Cameron was the first to agree. "Sometimes we go bad."

"So, if these files are shut down," Sarah was working it out as she went along, "and John, future John, seems to have trusted you with a hell of a lot of his secrets, can we assume the Trents have a pretty vital part to play, if he wouldn't trust even you with this?"

"I think that's a safe bet, mom."

Cameron nodded in confirmation and Derek managed a wry smile.

"Okay, so they're not just deluded fan-boys, Connor."

She gave him a brief smile, but it couldn't distract her from the fact that Michael lay critically injured in the next room and Zach was, in all likelihood, dead or a prisoner of Kaliba.

"Yeah." She shook her head, daunted by the choices now facing them. "Fuck."

. . . . .

Derek heard Sarah before he found her. The sound of her fists smacking against plastic grew louder as he approached the garage and it was punctuated by rough grunts of effort. When he opened the door, the heat in the small space was stifling and dust motes danced in the sunlight that filtered in through the filthy windows. He had no idea where she had found the decrepit punching bag, but her face was fixed with concentration as she pounded it rhythmically. He watched her for a couple of minutes, as loath to interrupt as she was to acknowledge his presence. Finally, after a fast flurry of hits, she grabbed the bag with her gloved hands and rested her forehead against it.

"John said no, didn't he?"

She didn't answer him. She was still panting, sweat soaking her face and clothing. He lowered himself to the floor, his back against the wall they had repaired.

"Safest thing would be for none of us to go, Sarah."

"I know that." She slammed a fist against the bag. "Do you think I don't fucking know that? No, John won't stay here and watch Michael, and yes, it would be safer if we all just stayed behind and did nothing, but I…" She shook her head, gulping for air. "Those coordinates are all we have, and…"

He finished her sentence for her. "And you think that's where Zach is."

"Yes," she conceded. "It seems like something they would do. At the very least, the possibility forces us to be cautious. We can't just blow whatever Kaliba have out there to shit, when there's a risk he'll be inside it."

"They'll have cleared the place out." That was so obvious, he couldn't understand why she couldn't see it. "So you risk John, you risk yourself, for what?"

She was already shaking her head, the chain on the bag clanging softly in time with her dissent. "That's why we need to move quickly." Even as she said it, she sounded as if she was struggling to believe it, and all the fight seemed to leave her in a rush. She walked over to the wall and lowered herself down beside him. "That location is all we have," she said again, but more desperately this time, as if willing him to support her. "If Zach is the only thing we come back with, then it'll have been worth it. We dragged him and Michael into this."

"We might come back with nothing. Meanwhile we leave Michael unprotected and go in there distracted by a hostage." He turned his face towards her. "It makes us all vulnerable."

She nodded. "You want to stay here, then?" She made it sound as if it was the most reasonable suggestion in the world. "You're the one with the med experience."

He didn't rise to the bait. He took her gloved hand, dumped it in his lap and began to untie the laces for her. "I just want you to be realistic, Connor. To see the bigger picture."

"They're a part of the bigger picture. Both of them." She pulled her hand away and leaned back to look at him properly. "Are you deliberately fucking goading me?"

"No, I'm playing devil's advocate. Someone's got to. John's fixed us a map and Cameron's already loading the truck."

She didn't want to be reminded of what they were going to do, or the tenuous logic behind their reasons for doing so. She had played all the arguments out with every punch she had landed, and she was well aware that gut instinct and a sense of duty were not solid enough foundations to build a mission on.

"Is this what I'm here to teach John?" she whispered, tears choking the words in her throat as all of her confidence crumbled away. "What if I'm wrong?"

He eased the glove from her hand, set it aside and interlaced her fingers with his own. "Then I guess he learns, one way or another."

Her hand was warm and clammy where he gripped it and he could feel her body shuddering as she fought to regain her composure. They sat in silence until eventually she gave him her other glove to unfasten. The laces had just fallen loose when the door was flung open and John stepped inside, blinking in the dust and then squinting at them with momentary confusion when he saw where they were.

"Michael's awake," he said, slightly breathlessly. "He's asking for you, mom."


	6. Chapter 6

As soon as Sarah entered the room with Derek, Michael pushed away the glass Cameron was holding for him and struggled to sit up straighter in the bed. Without speaking, Cameron put her arms around him and lifted him bodily into a more upright position. It was only after she stepped back from the bed that she realized he was staring up at her in astonishment.

"Uh, thanks."

"You're welcome," she smiled, completely oblivious to his reaction. "Would you like some chicken soup? It has excellent restorative powers, according to popular theory."

"We don't have any chicken soup, Cameron," Sarah snapped impatiently, pulling a chair up to the side of the bed. When she saw Michael, she ran a hand through her tangled hair and made an effort to soften her tone. "How about oatmeal?"

Michael shrugged as effectively as he could with his right shoulder tightly bandaged and his left arm tethered to an IV. "Sure, oatmeal's fine." He leaned back, waiting until Cameron had left the room before he turned to Sarah. "Where am I?"

"Somewhere safe," she said, not willing to be drawn on the specifics. "How're you feeling?"

"I'm okay. Zach?" The optimism on his face faded as soon as she shook her head, but he found himself unable to look away. "You're really her, aren't you? You're really Sarah Connor."

"Yeah. Yeah, I am."

He laughed nervously, his words tumbling over themselves. "I thought I recognized John, back at the café, but I kept telling myself it was bullshit, that he would be older, but then you're younger, too." He gave her an apologetic smile. "I guess you weren't exactly looking your best when you were arrested, and then the news reports switched to stock footage." His eyes widened as he slowly made the connection. "Holy shit, did you jump?"

For a long moment she didn't answer him. A glance at Derek saw him raise an eyebrow in a way that told her it was her call, and she came to her decision quickly after that.

"Yes. We jumped eight years."

"Jesus." The word escaped him in a breath. It had never been a game for him or Zach. They had always believed utterly in what they had chosen to do, but finally having confirmation of those beliefs made his heart race and his vision suddenly blur.

"Hey, take it easy." Derek stepped forward, concerned by how abruptly the color had drained from his patient's face. Michael nodded, his breathing ragged as tears brimmed in his eyes.

"There's a group of us." He licked his dry lips and tried to keep his hand from trembling as Sarah handed him the glass of water. "We met a few years back, through the forum, initially. I guess we've grown up together. We'd researched your case and Cyberdyne, and we knew that Judgment Day wasn't a lie, that it was really going to happen." He gave another awkward shrug. "We wanted to help."

"Help how?" Ordinarily, she would've dismissed the notion out of hand, but Cameron's data had already proven Michael and Zach's worth to the efforts of the Resistance.

"I'm studying Quantum Mechanics at Caltech. I'm only in my second year but I've already had job offers from three major research firms across the country."

"And Zach?" she prompted softly.

"He's at med school. He's specializing in pediatrics and immunology." The tears that had been threatening to fall were now streaming unheeded down his face. "He figured, after the war, someone would need to look out for the kids. He's been assisting with research projects, new drug trials. He's made contacts in the pharmaceutical industry and they supply him with samples of patented and trial drugs." He wiped his face with his left hand. "We have a stockpile."

"You guys are fucking serious, aren't you?" Derek's initial skepticism was rapidly waning.

"Totally." Michael managed a smile. "There were only eight of us at the start. All with different interests and skills. Four in the US, two in Britain, one in Australia and one in China. But we have about a hundred members now. Some are more involved than others, but we're all getting ready."

At no point did he speak with the exaggerated fervor of a cult member. If anything, his explanation was so lacking in sensation that it left Sarah no reason to doubt his claims.

"I had no idea it was John on the forum." He shifted uncomfortably and peered down with a wince at his shoulder. "I guess fate has a funny way of fucking us all about sometimes."

That surprised a wry laugh from her. "Yeah. I guess so." She didn't look at Derek this time. It was still her call to make. Leaning forwards in her chair, she took a deep breath and began to explain to Michael exactly how thoroughly fate had chosen to fuck with him and Zach.

It took her a while. He sat motionless, pale and silent as she told him about Kaliba and the research facility in Wyoming that had already been destroyed, and the one they thought was somewhere close to the coordinates he had given them. He listened to the scant details they had found regarding his and Zach's part in the future resistance, and his mouth dropped open when she told him that Cameron was a machine. Even with the morphine in his system, he thought he should've figured that one out for himself.

When she had finally laid it all out for him, she sounded as weary as he felt, and he wondered at the burden she had carried for almost eighteen years now. He had questions; despite the pain of his injury and the exhaustion that wouldn't let him think clearly, he had a thousand questions. But in the end, he only asked the one.

"Think you can find Zach?"

The look on his face told her to be honest with him.

"I don't know. We're gonna follow your coordinates, see what's out there, but we just don't know."

That was enough for him and he closed his eyes, reassured. "Thank you," he whispered, his voice fading as he edged towards sleep. "Thank you."

. . . . .

The T-888s at the Optima facility had worked tirelessly and without complaint for hours. Kristina took a step backwards to allow one of them to pass her with its load, and then peered into the room it had just left to evaluate their progress. They were on schedule, more or less. A problem with the cargo trucks had set them back slightly, but the equipment was largely dismantled and packaged, and two of the T-888s were already designing the welcome present she was planning to leave for the Connors.

She walked down the corridor, considering each room carefully before she opted for the most obvious tactic of selecting the one furthest from the entrance. Taking her PDA from her pocket, she tapped the central screen and studied the progress of the small red dot moving towards the complex. She estimated the operative was still an hour away, which left plenty of time for her to change into something a little more formal and grab herself something to eat.

. . . . .

The mood at the table was pensive. Sarah pushed her food around her plate with her fork; every bite she took tasted like sawdust. She glanced at John, who was eating but without his customary enthusiasm. By contrast, Derek cleared his plate with the methodical, auto-pilot ease of someone accustomed to taking a final meal before embarking on a potentially one-way mission. No-one was talking. Everything had already been said. They all looked up when the kitchen door opened, but Cameron was the quickest to move.

"You shouldn't be out of bed." Sarah hurriedly pulled another chair over to the table and Cameron guided Michael onto it.

"I…" He grabbed for the chair and sat down the instant before his legs collapsed from under him. "Yeah, maybe not."

"You sure you're gonna be okay on your own?" The effort of walking had left him sweating and breathing harshly, and Sarah was still hoping he might have a change of heart and say no, but he was already nodding. When they had had this discussion earlier, he had insisted that he could manage.

"First time I ever got shot," he said quietly. "But I've been hurt worse. My, uh, my dad wasn't too happy about having a queer for a son." He tried to smile but it never reached his eyes, and he took a mouthful of the pasta that Derek had plated up for him instead.

"I support Gay Rights," Cameron suddenly announced into the silence.

Sarah blinked slowly, Derek leaned back in his seat wondering exactly how this one was going to play out, and John almost choked on his spaghetti.

"You do?" John coughed again and then swallowed a gulp of water.

"I signed a petition." Cameron's face was flushed with something that resembled pride. "At school, there was a petition to allow Ruby Matheson and her girlfriend to go to the Prom. Didn't you sign it, John?"

He shook his head. He had never even heard of Ruby Matheson. "No, I guess I missed out on that."

Michael was laughing quietly. He knew now why Cameron lacked so many social graces, but she still amused the hell out of him. "Guess you could've taught my dad a thing or two, Cameron."

"Yes." She paused, taking the time to consider exactly what form those lessons might have taken, and he gave an involuntary shiver at the expression on her face. "Yes, I probably could have."

"Cameron," Sarah broke into the exchange before Cameron got the idea of asking Michael for his father's current whereabouts. "Don't you still have work to do on the perimeter?"

"Oh." The machine smiled and nodded. "Yes. It should take me approximately forty-six minutes."

"Fine, we should be good by then."

John went out with her and Derek started to clear the table. Once her plate had been taken, Sarah turned to Michael.

"You ever fire a gun?"

"Once. After our house was broken into, we went to a range. We had a gun locked up in the bedroom, but Zach mustn't have been able to get to it in time."

She took her Glock from the back of her pants and set it on the table. "Okay, then I guess you're overdue a refresher."

Neither of them pointed out how inadequate one handgun would be in the event of a Kaliba attack. The perimeter Cameron was setting would be a complete one. She would arm the access gate as they left. If anyone approached the house, he would at least have a few minutes of advanced warning. He gripped the gun, feeling the pull on his shoulder as he forced his arm to move. He wouldn't let them take him, and he realized that, if it came to it, one handgun would be perfectly adequate after all.

. . . . .

The list in Kristina's hand contained twelve names. Zach only had ten fingers, so she had told the machine to start with his left hand and take its time. She had been surprised at how little screaming there had been.

"Okay." She took a step closer to the young man in the chair and grinned when he flinched away from her. His cheek was warm and sticky beneath her hand. "I think that's enough for now." She folded the list into her jacket pocket – the names already deeply ingrained in her memory – and stroked his hair gently. "Give him some water and I'll see you in an hour."

The machine nodded and uncapped a bottle from the tray where it had laid its tools out. The sound of Zach coughing and retching faded when Kristina closed the door behind her.

She had instructed the machines to delay clearing her office until the last minute. The heat inside was smothering; she pulled her jacket off and threw it across the room. A crystal decanter went the same way, splintering into hundreds of pieces and leaving a satisfying dent in the wall.

Zach hadn't told her a thing. In four hours he had barely said a word, and he had fainted twice, which had only eaten further into the time she had left. Kaliba desperately wanted those people on the list. It had been attempting to track them for years, but a promising lead at a psychiatrist's practice had gone cold and Sydney Fields had vanished into thin air along with her sister. Zach and Michael were the first breakthrough they had had in months and their very first contact with any of the main players.

As Michael had been considered the priority target, it was his name they had been searching for, not realizing that the surname the couple shared had originally been Zach's. To her, that seemed something of a schoolboy error, as did Kaliba's decision to focus their efforts on Australia, based on nothing more than anecdotal information showing the couple had been living in Canberra when the bombs had dropped. Kristina was well aware how fickle and fluid the future was. The role she performed for Kaliba was one long manipulation of the butterfly effect, and accidentally finding the Trents was going to prove a perfect case in point.

The irony that Kaliba would probably never have found the Trents without the interference of the Connors had kept Kristina smiling despite the upheaval they had also caused. Executing Zach seemed wasteful to her, but Kaliba were not interested in any attempts to convert him to their cause and they had no need for his skills as a half-qualified pediatrician. Undermining and weakening the group of people he had managed to organize had been viewed as the preferred outcome. It was her familiarity with the two men that had ultimately won her the approval to conduct Zach's interrogation, and she was beginning to feel the pressure.

An alert on her PDA put the trucks' ETA at three hours, which meant she would be at her new site in less than twelve. The thought invigorated her and she checked her watch. It had only been thirty minutes. That was just too fucking bad for Zach, she decided, and crossed the room to pick up her jacket.

. . . . .

Having had the luxury of time in which to choose, John and Cameron had stolen a Jeep in far better condition than Sarah and Derek's truck had been, and it had reached the edge of the desert without incident. Two hours later, as they made their way along yet another section of track that dipped into a clump of scrub oak and provided no easy route through, the engine overheated again and they had to stop.

Without waiting to be told, Cameron climbed from the back seat and lifted the truck's hood as Sarah popped the lever. John stirred and mumbled in his sleep, but that was his only contribution to their latest delay. By Cameron's estimate, they were still three and a half hours from Silver Needle, with no idea where the Kaliba facility was from there.

"Give it ten minutes," Cameron announced when she returned to her seat.

Derek lowered his window, the familiar scents of the desert drifting into the truck and taking the edge off Sarah's nerves. Their mission had nothing beside a vague location, a wing and a prayer. It was uncomfortably reminiscent of their meeting with Michael, and John's presence in the back seat was making her chest so tight that it was hard for her to breathe. They were stronger as a team, she reminded herself. They had metal, a vast assortment of weapons, grenades, C4, and the element of surprise, no matter how diluted. Her chest still ached when she drew a breath. She checked her watch and then restarted the engine.

. . . . .

Zach closed his eyes as the young woman walked away from him. He wasn't really sure what was happening anymore, but he knew that as long as he didn't speak then everyone would be safe. Half of her questions he hadn't understood. Some of the names that she had repeated over and over he hadn't even recognized. When she had asked him about Sarah and John Connor he had still been alert enough to disguise his reaction. He had no idea how they were involved, but that was the point when he had stopped talking completely.

It wasn't like it was in the movies. He hadn't snarled his defiance and then worked to break free from the chair they had bound him to. He had been sick with fear and mostly only semi-coherent, and he hurt worse than he had ever believed possible. In the corner, making no attempt to lower their voices, the woman and the man were discussing his fate.

"Leaving him alive is contrary to our orders." It was the first time he had heard the man speak.

The woman replied as if she was explaining something to a small child. "Oh, I don't intend him to live for long." She didn't think Zach would even be found, not if everything went according to plan, but she liked to have contingencies in place. He was no great threat to Kaliba, so the tiny risk she was taking seemed well worthwhile. "I just want him to delay the Connors for long enough that none of them gets out of here." She turned back to face Zach, and the blank look in her eyes was more terrifying than anything that had happened to him so far. "I don't want him to be able to run."

The man gave a curt nod. A quick flash of a blade, and the ropes around Zach's ankles fell loose. He felt an unyielding grip take hold of his right leg, and realized what the man was about to do at the same time as he finally understood that what knelt at his side wasn't a man at all. Then he heard the crack, and the shock of the pain made everything fade away.

. . . . .

With no street lights or headlights, night in the desert brought near-total darkness. In the front seat of the Jeep, Sarah clung onto the dash as Cameron drove. The machine had extinguished the truck's high beams to stop them interfering with her infrared vision. She was managing to maintain a decent speed without hurtling them head-first into any of the huge boulders that littered the landscape, but the size of the obstacles they were so narrowly missing had not gone unnoticed by Sarah.

"How far?" Sarah was reluctant to speak in case Cameron decided to make eye contact when she answered. The handheld GPS Sarah had been tracking their route on was reasonably accurate, but she knew the machine was better.

"Five minutes. You might want to wake John."

"I'm awake." John's protest was undermined slightly when he yawned halfway through it. "Where the hell are we?"

Outside his window, eerie shapes loomed out of the void; windswept trees, bizarre rock formations and cacti that were taller than he was. Another minute passed before anyone gave him an answer.

"We're here." Cameron slowed the Jeep to a stop. "Michael's coordinates were quite precise."

Sarah climbed from her seat and stretched her limbs with a murmur of relief. It was only when she played a flashlight carefully over their surroundings that she realized exactly how precise Michael's coordinates had been.

"Jesus, Cameron." The front bumper of the Jeep was an inch away from an immense tower of white rock which tapered into a slender point as it thrust skywards. In a contest, the Jeep would have lost, badly. She turned her head when she heard John approaching.

"Guess we know where it gets its name from." He craned his head back to try to take in the scale of it.

"I guess so."

Cameron had crossed to a small clearing, and was slowly turning three-sixty degrees as she scanned the immediate area. When she had finished, she walked further away from them and repeated the process. Sarah watched the machine for another couple of minutes before the cool air started to make her shiver and she went back to the truck.

"Thanks." She pulled on the jacket Derek had handed to her and zipped it up tightly.

"Yeah," he was rubbing his hands together, "wish I'd brought gloves."

By the time Cameron returned, all three of them were back in the Jeep with the heater cranked up.

"Two miles south-south-west of here," she said without preamble, "there is an east-west track that appears to be reasonably well-maintained."

"You went that far?" Sarah's pulse was already pounding along at double-speed.

"No, I went far enough that I could see the track. The human eye could not detect it from here, not even in the daylight. I could not see what it led to."

"Any signs of security?"

"None that I could detect."

Derek ran a hand across his jaw. "So, we just go to the track and then travel a distance in both directions?"

Cameron gave a nod. "Unless I can get a clearer view once we are closer." She looked to Sarah for guidance, who in turn glanced at John and Derek.

"Yeah, go ahead," Sarah said off their reactions. "We go slow, keep the lights off." She heard Derek pump the shotgun and John slide the clip out from his Glock before slapping it back into place. Her Glock was already in her hand, and the Remington within easy reach in the footwell. As Cameron maneuvered slowly around the Needle and began to pick up speed, none of that felt like nearly enough.

. . . . .

A rustle off to the left sounded impossibly loud to Zach, but he knew that other senses compensated when one had been taken away. Before the woman had left, she had secured the blindfold into place herself, her expensive candy-apple-sweet perfume wafting over him and making him feel sick. As soon as her footsteps and then all the other noises had faded, he had started to count. One Mississippi, two Mississippi, tracking the time as it passed and taking his mind off the relentless pain in his hands and his leg. Although he had drifted between lucidity and unconsciousness, his numbers were high enough to tell him that at least an hour had gone by.

The air in the room was hot and still, and it was getting harder for him to draw a breath with the tape across his mouth. He fought to control the panic that threatened to pull him under again.

"I don't need you to scream anymore," she had told him after gagging him. She had spoken directly into his ear and afterwards kissed it gently.

He had only screamed once in all the time he had spent in that room. She must have known that if he heard anything other than the hard, heavy tread of the machines, the noise he would make would not be a scream for help, but a warning.

. . . . .

The signs that they were in the right place became more apparent as they left the Needle behind. They passed vast, circular hollows where the scrub had been scorched and the ground was still charred and barren. With increasing frequency, the coarse, sandy rock of the boulders bore blackened scars, and a number of them had been shattered as if caught between a massive hammer and anvil. The devastation was focused on one relatively small area; once they had driven through that, the desert landscape returned to normal.

"I wonder when they started to organize like this." Sarah was staring out of the window. The pattern of destruction they had just witnessed suggested a lot of traffic had passed through the Kaliba TDE. "You think they can go forwards as well as back?" Kyle had told the police: nobody goes home, that his trip was one-way only. But the rules were constantly being rewritten, and the thought of Skynet opening up their time-travel in such a way was not a pleasant one.

"We used a machine built in 1963," John reminded her quietly. "I guess if they can't communicate with the future then they'll be trying to fix that, especially after what we did at Deacon."

"Yeah, I guess." She didn't sound very happy about that prospect.

"One thing at a time, mom." He squeezed her hand and felt her return the pressure gently. "We'll just add it onto the list for later."

His refusal to dwell upon the seemingly insurmountable odds made her smile, and she leaned back in her seat as Cameron stopped the Jeep just before they hit the track. The machine climbed out and walked forwards, her assault rifle held at the ready as she scanned in both possible directions. Only a couple of minutes passed before she returned to the driver's seat.

"There's a low-level building one and a quarter miles east. The track also has fresh tire marks heading west. Two large cargo trucks and two smaller SUVs." She caught Sarah's gaze in the rearview mirror. "Whatever was out there, I think it has already been removed."

Sarah nodded; that was something they had all feared. "Let's go make sure."

. . . . .

They didn't use the track. Even if the facility was deserted, advertizing their approach in such a blatant manner seemed ill-advised. Cutting a wide arc around the building, Cameron took them as close as she deemed safe and then stopped the truck in a well-concealed spot surrounded by rocks and creosote bushes. Without speaking, they divided bags and weapons between themselves.

"Stick together or split?" Derek hefted his small duffel bag over his shoulder and tucked his radio into his pants, leaving both hands free to hold the M-79.

"Stick together." Sarah's decision was immediate and delivered in a tone that did not invite debate. Dividing into smaller teams never seemed to end well for them.

Taking point, Cameron kept to the shadows as she forged an indirect path towards the front of the building. When she paused to scan, Sarah took out a pair of night-vision goggles and did likewise.

"Nothing," she said, handing the goggles to Derek. "No obvious security, no lights, no sign of life, nothing. Fuck." It had been a long trip for their only achievement to be causing Kaliba a slight inconvenience.

"If they moved on in a hurry, they might have gotten sloppy, left something behind." John passed the goggles back to his mother and tried not to think what they would have to tell Michael when they got home.

"Quick sweep." Derek looked at Sarah, who nodded and followed behind Cameron as soon as she set off moving again.

What seemed to pass for a front door had been left ajar, and the sight of it, even from a relatively safe distance, made the hairs stand up on the back of Sarah's neck.

"I can't detect any indication of wiring or explosives." Cameron tilted her head to one side and closed her eyes. "One male voice, young. He sounds distressed."

"Shit." That changed everything. Sarah's fingers clenched and unclenched around the Remington. "Shit."

"It's a fucking set-up, Sarah." Derek was staring at the door as it slowly swung in the breeze, waiting for the monsters to appear.

"I know," she whispered, "we all know it's a fucking set-up." Stating the obvious wasn't helping. "Why leave him here otherwise? Hell, it might not even be Zach. It could be metal."

"Mom, if it is him..."

"I know, John." The longer this debate went on, the more dangerous the situation became. There were no good options, but when she looked at her son's face she realized he was only considering one. With a sinking heart, she gestured at Cameron. "Go."

As they moved steadily closer, Derek resumed his position beside Sarah. "Keep the machine with John," he said in an undertone. "Whatever happens, he's gonna be their target."

She nodded, and nodded again when Cameron glanced back towards her. There was no need to reiterate what had just been decided; she knew that Cameron had heard everything.

It took them a while to reach the door, and the cries had tapered off into exhausted sobs. A narrow corridor stretched before them. It was dark, the electricity disconnected, and the heat was suffocating as soon as they stepped over the threshold. They could see four doors and then the corridor swung around to the right.

"He's in the lower level, possibly a basement," Cameron answered Sarah's unspoken question.

"Always a fucking basement," Derek muttered, and despite everything Sarah gave him a wry smile.

"Get in and out of these rooms as quick as we can. You two to search." She pointed to Cameron and John. "We'll keep watch. Prop the doors open."

Every room had been stripped bare. Discarded wiring and dust-free areas suggested that large amounts of technical equipment had once occupied the majority of the floor space, but nothing useful had been left behind, and they made rapid progress with the sweep.

At no point had Cameron detected a heat signature behind the closed doors. Nothing was booby-trapped and nothing ambushed them. When they arrived at the junction of the corridor, Sarah was soaked through with sweat and her mouth was dry. Nothing should be this easy, nothing ever was.


	7. Chapter 7

Zach wasn't sure if he was going to pass out. Beneath the blindfold, small sparks kept shooting across from the periphery of his vision, and he could barely hold his head up. At first he had blamed the voice on his condition, some bizarre trick played out by pain and shock and dehydration, but the voice that was his and yet wasn't his had persisted, and he had slowly realized why.

He couldn't do much, but he was damned if he was just going to sit and do nothing. He tried again, rocking from side to side in an effort to move the chair, to topple it over, to do anything to make a noise. Without warning, the foot on his broken leg jarred awkwardly against the floor. The snapped bones grated together with a pain so intense it made him retch. It seemed like forever until it settled to something bearable, but as soon as it did he gritted his teeth and kept trying.

. . . . .

There were only three doors along the second length of corridor. The first two were reasonably close together but the third was barely visible at the far end. The office behind the first was nicely appointed. Plush carpets muffled the sound of John and Cameron's boots, and landscape paintings adorned the walls as if the occupant had been trying to compensate for the lack of windows.

Taking up much of the center space was a large, hardwood desk, and John quickly began to search through its drawers and cupboards. They were all completely empty, and he had to force himself to rein in his frustration and not slam them closed. He was about to stand up when the beam of his flashlight played across something that sparkled unexpectedly. He turned on his knees for a closer look. The dent in the wall caused by the ornament smashing against it was obvious despite the dim light and he was faintly amused to think that even the bad guys had shitty days. He could smell alcohol, something sweet and heady which indicated that a human had occupied the office, and a foul-tempered one at that. Cameron signaled that she had finished her half of the search, and he stood up, his boot crunching on the shards of crystal.

If the carpet hadn't been so dark, he would probably never have seen the white of the paper buried beneath the shattered decanter. He pushed into the debris with the toe of his boot, shifting the pieces aside until he could safely pick up whatever had been overlooked. The paper was damp and sticky with liquor. He unfolded it gingerly to find a list of names, some of them rendered blurred and unreadable by the liquid, but the majority still legible. Zach and Michael's were close to the top. He allowed himself a small smile, refolded the paper with utmost care, and tucked it into the pocket of his jacket.

. . . . .

Sarah trained the flashlight on the second door as Derek examined every inch of it. Once he was satisfied with his findings, he dipped the handle and cautiously pushed it open. Instead of office space, the door led to a flight of stairs, and the young man's voice immediately became more audible. He was still shouting for help, his words hoarse and fractured as he pleaded not to be left alone. Trying to ignore the sounds, she studied the staircase – a flimsy, open construction of metal steps that met a small landing before turning and continuing for a further flight. She could just about see the bottom some thirty feet below. Beyond that point there was only darkness. At her nod, Derek closed the door, but the barrier wasn't enough to block out the desperate entreaties completely, and they both knew that they would go down there as soon as John and Cameron had completed their search.

As if on cue, John appeared in the doorway, his face slightly more optimistic than it had been.

"You find something?" Sarah met him halfway.

"Yeah, I hope so."

"Good." Now all they had to do was get Zach and get the hell out. "We found the basement."

. . . . .

Cameron's footsteps echoed off the metal staircase despite her attempts to tread lightly. Waiting at the top, Sarah watched her slow but sure descent; with John following behind her, the machine was leaving nothing to chance. They were both nearing the first landing when Sarah heard the distant thud.

"What the hell? Derek?"

The noise had come from the one room they hadn't yet checked. Derek, only two steps down, had heard it too. He turned back towards her, bringing the M-79 up to bear. As if sensing a shift in their focus, the shouts from below them became more forceful, more demanding, and instantly less convincing.

"Shit. John!"

"Mom?"

"Back up, now!"

He didn't ask why. The tone of her voice told him everything he needed to know.

She could hear their footsteps clattering on the stairs, seeming louder still because the young man had suddenly fallen silent. Somewhere in the basement, a door opened and then slammed shut.

"Get him out of here." Directing her order at Cameron, Sarah pushed John ahead of her, back towards the entrance, but Cameron caught hold of his jacket sleeve and held it fast. The front door had barely made a sound when it had just clicked shut, but it had been enough for Cameron to detect it.

"Not that way."

There was no other obvious exit. John looked at Sarah, his eyes wide with fear. She took a deep breath, snatched the M-79 from Derek and tossed it to Cameron.

"Do your thing." She nodded towards the stairwell, grabbed John by the arm and set off running for the last door.

. . . . .

They had just reached the end of the corridor when they heard the first blast. Throwing herself forward, Sarah barreled into John, taking them both to the ground and covering him with her body. Derek slid in beside them but turned himself slightly outwards, Cameron's assault rifle heavy in his grip and aimed dead-center at the cloud of smoke that was billowing from the basement entrance. A second explosion made the walls shake, and chunks of plaster rained down to thud against Sarah's back and arms. Ignoring the dull pain, she curled herself more tightly against John and waited for the cascade of debris to stop.

Footsteps approached at a run. Derek adjusted the angle of the M-4A1, his breath coming hard and fast as he waited to see what would emerge from the dust. He altered his aim again slightly when he saw Cameron, but continued to target the corridor, covering her for any sign of pursuit.

"At least one Triple-8." Unfazed by the fact that shrapnel had ripped deep gouges into her face and hands, Cameron scanned the door as Sarah unfolded herself and quietly checked that John was unscathed. "The staircase is destroyed but it will find a way out."

"What about the main entrance?" Derek still hadn't relaxed his stance, but the smoke was clearing and the corridor remained empty.

"Something was there. It'll wait for us to come to it," Cameron said, reaching a hand out to the doorframe, "but it won't wait for long." Her brief analysis found the door capable of withstanding small-arms fire and revealed a single, human heat-signature behind it. She kicked it open without asking for permission; the human was small, injured, and lying awkwardly on the floor.

"Get it blocked." Sarah covered Derek as he ran in last, and then slammed the door shut and stepped aside. Cameron and John immediately started to drag the leftover furniture across to form a barricade.

"Derek..." Sarah's voice trailed off as she dropped to her knees beside the young man, who hadn't moved since they had entered the room. "Zach?" When she laid a hand on his shoulder he shrank away from her touch, but at the sound of his name he nodded, and she felt him relax slightly. "Michael's safe," she said simply. "We're gonna get you out of here, okay?" Although he couldn't answer her, she knew he had understood because his shoulders began to shake as he sobbed silently.

"Help me set the chair straight, Sarah."

Ducking low as Cameron passed a metal filing cabinet above his head to add to the growing barrier at the door, Derek waited until Sarah was also able to stand, and then they lifted Zach as carefully as they could. He moaned when he felt them working to unfasten the ropes and blindfold.

"Keep your eyes closed for now, Zach." The cloth had fallen away to reveal deep red welts that told her how long he had been left like that. He did as she said and didn't make a sound when she peeled the tape from his lips.

"Sarah." Derek's voice was low and tightly controlled, and she looked down to where he was pointing his flashlight.

"Fucking hell." She had whispered the curse before she could stop herself.

Zach's right leg had moved strangely when Derek had cut it free, and he had run his knife up along the pants seam to find out why. The fracture was mid-shaft, the skin around it already hot and swollen. Zach kicked away with his good leg when Derek touched the injury.

"They've fucked up his fingers as well." Derek was throwing open his bag, digging out the first aid kit. "Dislocations, probably, or fractures." Medically, he knew he was out of his depth. "We can't move him like this."

Now that he was untied, Sarah was struggling to keep Zach sitting on the chair. He wasn't alert enough to hold his position, and she finally gave up and lowered him to the floor.

"We might not have a choice," she said as Derek slipped a needle into Zach's wrist. She could see Cameron pacing around the small room, gauging the composition of the outer walls, searching for any points of weakness. When the machine stopped dead in her tracks and traced a path upwards towards the ceiling, Sarah swallowed hard as a knot formed in the pit of her stomach.

"Cameron?"

Instead of answering her, Cameron dragged a table away from the door, upended it and climbed nimbly onto its edge. After loosening a ceiling tile, she peered into the crawl space.

"Twenty-two and a half minutes." She dropped back down to the floor and returned the table to its position.

Strangely calm, Sarah nodded. She knew exactly what Cameron had found, and it explained exactly why nothing was attempting to break through the door to kill them all. Why waste the effort when they had been so effectively trapped in a building wired to explode?

. . . . .

"Zach, deep breath."

Despite the morphine, despite the splint they had made out of the chair's legs and the bandages Derek had wrapped around his hands, Zach still bit through his lip trying not to scream when they stood him up.

As soon as the machines heard the banging they would figure out what was going on. One way or another, everyone in the room was getting ready to run.

"Don't look back, okay?" Sarah cupped John's cheek in her hand. "Get to the Jeep."

He nodded. Even though he hated the idea, he nodded. It had never been stated that Sarah and Derek would be the ones bringing up the rear with Zach; that was just the way it was going to be. She kissed her son's forehead. He was warm and sweating, and, despite his best efforts, tears filled his eyes at her touch.

"Just keep going," she whispered. "We'll catch you up." She looked over at Derek who hitched Zach a little straighter and then nodded. "Okay, Cameron, now!"

With nothing to protect them from a blast, grenades were out of the question, but the outer wall was a breeze block and stucco construction and the machine was confident she could punch a way through. The only problem with that methodology was time. There were only twenty minutes left on the clock and they had to get far enough away to avoid being caught in the explosion.

"Nothing's ever fucking easy, is it?" Derek tried to smile. It came out all wrong, but Sarah appreciated the attempt and gripped his hand briefly.

The first draft of cool air reached her as Cameron shattered an outer section of the wall. She and John moved to help, kicking against the loose blocks as the hole grew wider and then finally became large enough for them to squeeze through.

There was no track at the rear of the building, so the boulders and scrub cover was closer. Sarah could dimly make out John's outline as he sprinted across the short clearing that surrounded the facility and headed for the relative safety of the nearest rock cluster. Her hands beneath Zach's arms, she pulled him free of the gap and waited until Derek pushed his bag through and then joined her. They were just about to lift Zach up when they heard the first crackle of gunfire.

"Shit." She slammed herself back down to the ground as the figure strode around the corner of the building. It was still some distance away from them and was targeting the area that Cameron had just run towards. The fact that it wasn't at all damaged and seemed completely unconcerned about its own safety strongly implied it was the T-888 that had been waiting for them at the front entrance.

"We can't stay here, Sarah."

"I know. Get him up."

She checked her watch: thirteen minutes. A sharp crack and a burst of light from the rocks told her that Cameron was returning fire. With a muttered apology, Derek hauled Zach over his shoulder, and Sarah pumped the Remington as he struggled to his feet. Alerted by the activity, the T-888 sprayed an arc of bullets towards their position, sand and stones thrown upwards as they fell short. Cameron fired again, trying to run interference, but the T-888 was advancing rapidly. Sarah pushed Derek away from her.

"Move!"

There was no time to argue with her logic. He did as she ordered, trying not to stumble over the uneven terrain as the weight across his shoulders threw him off-balance. She was running with him; he could hear her breathing, steady and calm as if she were out for an evening jog, and then it became quieter and he realized she had stopped. The Remington fired once, twice, the noise thunderous at such close quarters. He heard her set off again and then the rattle of the T-888's automatic as it spat another burst in her direction. Ahead of him, Cameron stepped into view, firing past him to try to give Sarah the break she needed. As he reached the rocks, he lowered Zach to the ground and swapped his M-79 for Cameron's assault rifle. Sarah was too close to the machine for him to risk using the M-79.

"Get John to the Jeep."

"Yes."

He turned away from her, back towards the building, to see the T-888 bearing down fast on where Sarah crouched partially concealed but completely unprotected by a tattered patch of scrub oak and two half-grown cacti. He watched as she took careful aim, allowed the machine to come as close as she dared, and then blew its right arm off at the elbow. She was already running when it fired reflexively with the gun in its left hand. She staggered slightly but stayed on her feet. Ignoring the sweat that stung his eyes, Derek sighted the T-888 in the M-4A1's scope, took a breath to ease the trembling in his hands, and ripped a hole in the machine's torso. The shots slammed it backwards and it sent up a plume of dust as it landed heavily and somersaulted twice.

"Thanks." Bent double at his side, Sarah rested her hands on her knees as she fought to catch her breath.

"You okay?"

"I'm good. John?"

"With Cameron."

"Zach?"

A low groan sounded at her feet and Derek stooped to sit him up. "Still with us?"

"Yeah." Zach managed a thumbs-up with the one thumb that still worked.

"Six minutes, Derek."

"That fucker moving?" Derek clambered up with his burden.

She had taken hold of the assault rifle, her tongue flicking over her bottom lip as she concentrated. The T-888 jerked slowly into a sitting position and she smiled grimly. The Remington had already opened a gaping hole in the machine's temple, and she aimed for the weakened area. When she fired, the far side of its head exploded outwards in a shower of blue sparks.

"Not anymore," she said.

There was a pause before Derek gave a short bark of laughter. "Fucking badass," he muttered, and then led the way deeper into the desert.

. . . . .

Sarah knew they wouldn't make the Jeep in time. Although they were heading in roughly the right direction, the landscape had too many obstacles for them to cover any real distance, and when she spotted a small, sheltered dip in the ground she called for Derek to stop.

"We're still too close, Sarah." He was panting, his legs threatening to give way.

"We keep going, we're gonna be caught in the open."

They only had two minutes left, and she panned her flashlight around to show him how Spartan the next section of land was.

"Shit."

She moved away from him, knelt in the dip and began digging into the rough sand with her bare hands. He shook his head at the futility, but settled Zach against a rock and followed her lead. It gained them a few inches. With a minute still to go, she helped him pull Zach into the shelter.

"Keep your head down and stay under these."

Zach nodded, his eyes never leaving hers as he fought to process what she was telling him. She had already stripped her jacket off, and she arranged it over him before doing the same with Derek's.

"Forty seconds."

Derek's throat was too dry to answer. When he lay down beside her, he felt her move to close the small gap between them, and he tucked his arm around her.

"I don't think this is exactly what Cameron had in mind," he said, his breath warm on her cheek. "Y'know, with the spooning."

She didn't say anything, but after a couple of seconds she started to shake. He couldn't tell if she was laughing or crying and suspected it was probably a little of both. Pulling her tightly against him, he closed his eyes as fire split the sky open.

. . . . .

As the roar of the explosion intensified, Sarah brought her arms up to cover her head, screwed her eyes shut and held her breath. Although the blast remained confined to the building, the shockwave was spreading outwards, uprooting trees and sending rocks and dust flying. The debris smashed and splintered around them, the small hollow providing some but not total protection as the wind blew hotly and fire began to take hold of the dry vegetation. Hours seemed to pass before the onslaught of noise and heat faded, to leave a dull ringing in her ears and a landscape that flickered with red and orange. She uncurled herself and gingerly sat up. Her arms stung with fresh scrapes and bruises. She watched Derek put a hand to the back of his head and then wince when he found the laceration that was trickling blood down his neck. With their jackets wrapped over and around him, Zach had fared better, and he managed a weak smile as she uncovered him.

All of her muscles complained when she pushed herself to her feet and looked back towards the facility. What little remained of it was burning ferociously, the flames licking out towards the grasses and trees.

"Derek?" Her voice sounded muffled and tinny, and she had to repeat herself before he looked up at her. "You okay?"

He nodded, still slightly dazed, and then gestured to the radio on her belt. The light on it was flashing, but she hadn't heard the tone announcing an incoming comm.

"Mom?" By pressing it to her ear, she could just about make out John's voice. "Mom, you okay?"

"Yeah." She coughed and tried again. "We're okay. You?"

"Fine. We're at the Jeep. It's missing a few windows but it'll drive. Head to a bearing of 45.13.22 east."

"45.13.22 east," she repeated, hurriedly feeding the numbers into her handheld GPS.

"Yeah, we're gonna try and come to you. Cameron can't see anything moving out there."

"Okay." Relief was sapping all of her energy and she sat down heavily as her legs began to shake.

"See you in a few, mom."

When he ended the call, she dropped the radio into her lap, closed her eyes and took a shuddering breath. She felt Derek press a bottle of water into her hand.

"Thanks." The water was warm and stale but wonderfully soothing against her parched throat.

"Ready?" The heat from the fire was beginning to feel uncomfortably close. Derek held his hand out to her and pulled her up. He looked utterly exhausted. When he knelt down to lift Zach, she took one of Zach's arms and they supported him between them.

"That way." She pointed in the rough direction of John's coordinates, straightened her back and forced herself to start walking.

. . . . .

They heard the Jeep before they saw it. Even now, even knowing John was trying to find them, Derek dropped low with Zach, and Sarah crouched with her shotgun aimed towards the sound of the engine. Her radio buzzed twice and she pressed the button to accept the comm.

"Ease up, mom, that's us you can hear."

The rumble of tires and engine was closer but she still couldn't see them.

"How the hell?"

He laughed at her incredulous tone.

"Cameron did the math, figured you'd have gotten about this far."

Sarah stepped out into the open as the Jeep rounded a boulder the size of a small house. She guessed it was John who flashed the high-beams at her, and as they came fully into view she smiled at the same time he did.

"Clear, Derek."

There was a rustle and a stifled gasp as Derek brought Zach to his feet. They were already staggering towards her as she turned, intending to help. The Jeep's door slammed and John ran past her, taking hold of Zach's arm and most of his weight and then helping Derek to settle him into the back seat. She watched her son, too weary to do anything other than stay on her feet and stare at him. She still hadn't moved when he came back to her and wrapped his arms around her.

"You're really okay?" Her voice sounded muffled against his t-shirt.

"Really, mom." She felt his low laughter. "I scuffed my knee when I tripped over a rock. I put a Band-Aid on it." She laughed too, but it sounded suspiciously like a sob, and he tightened his hold. "C'mon, let's go home."

. . . . .

It had been a squeeze to fit them all in, but John had settled down on a mass of jackets and blankets in the Jeep's rear footwell and Derek sat with Zach's head resting on his knees. A large dose of morphine had knocked Zach out, and from the front seat Sarah could hear the steady, deep breaths that told her John was also asleep.

There were no easy choices for their route home, but they had decided to stick to the relative safety of the desert rather than trying to regain the track that led away from the facility. They were making slow progress as Cameron weaved the Jeep back in the direction she had travelled from in order to pick up their original trail to the Needle.

"Jesus." Sarah adjusted her grip on the Remington as they broke out onto an exposed area the size of a football field.

"It takes forty-five seconds to cross," Cameron said in a tone that she might have intended to be reassuring.

"Yeah, quick as you can." Sarah gave the warning unnecessarily. Cameron had already accelerated hard to cover the distance, and the Jeep was bouncing and rocking on the rough ground, dust flying up to obscure the windshield. There was no glass in Sarah's side window but she still stared out of it, trying to keep watch as the grit stung her eyes and made her cough.

"Approximately fifty yards."

She nodded, her fingers cramping around the stock of the shotgun. A gap in the oncoming rocks loomed large and inviting and she began to relax slightly. They were only thirty yards away when the back of the Jeep seemed to explode in a rush of splintering glass and tearing metal. As they were thrown forward, Cameron lost control of the steering for a split-second and everything turned upside down before Sarah was slammed into blackness.


	8. Chapter 8

Something dripped, wet and rhythmic, marking the seconds as they ticked by. Sarah opened her eyes with the sudden shock of knowing there was something she had to do. The world spun sickeningly. She shook her head, regretting it immediately as the dripping sound sped up; she put a hand to her scalp to pull it away slick with blood. She blinked, unable to figure out how she had gotten hurt or where she was or why everything looked so wrong.

"Oh God." Another second passed, another drip of blood, and she had her answers. "John?" She was still upside down, hanging from her seatbelt. "John?" Her fingers fumbled with the fastening as she braced herself to drop. "Derek?" The driver's seat was empty, and she could see Cameron's body lying as still as death in a crumpled heap where the impact of the crash had thrown her. Sarah fervently hoped that meant that less than two minutes had passed and not that the cyborg was irreparably damaged. "Reese?"

The answering moan from the back was obscured by the crack and thud of Sarah dropping free from her belt. It hurt, but there was something out there and she was the only one moving. She reached a shaking hand to John's throat. Half of his face was obscured by blood, but his pulse was strong. She snatched in a breath and grabbed hold of the Remington. As she did so, she could see Derek slowly beginning to try to shift from where he lay trapped beneath Zach's weight. She couldn't waste time helping him; she pushed on her door, giving herself something to hide behind as she crawled free from the wreckage. Within seconds, the metal sparked and creased inwards as a bullet glanced off it. She tried to track its trajectory to find their assailant.

"Fuck."

Ducking back down behind the door, she sat with her back against it and fought to steady her breathing. The clouds had thinned to leave a three-quarter moon blazing light onto the clearing, but despite this the T-888 was making absolutely no attempt to conceal its approach. Torn, scorched skin hung in strips from its face, the metal of its skull gleaming beneath it. With one leg grotesquely twisted, it walked with a pronounced limp, dragging its ruined body inexorably closer. A pistol pointed outwards in the one hand that hadn't been burned completely off. Cameron's efforts with the M-79 in the stairwell and then the explosion had obviously taken their toll, but they hadn't been enough to destroy it, and it was intent on completing its mission.

She pumped the Remington, trying desperately to remember how many shells were left in it. Her first shot flew wide, her position not allowing her to aim with any accuracy, and she looked around to try to find better cover. She knew she had to divert the machine's attention away from the Jeep. She fired again, blasting its chest with enough force to make it stagger backwards, and without giving herself the opportunity for second thoughts she sprinted towards the rocks they had so nearly reached. A searing heat across her thigh told her she had not made it completely unscathed. Ignoring the pain, she watched as the T-888 cocked its head on one side to study the Jeep and then altered its course to head towards her.

Panting for breath, she wiped sweat and blood away from her face with the back of her hand as she tried to think. Although she now had what she wanted, she had no idea what to do next, and she could see the T-888 steadily closing the gap. She wanted to run, to draw it further into the desert, but with its mobility so impaired she was afraid it would decide to cut its losses and return to the Jeep to execute those inside.

A quick signal from a flashlight indicated that Derek was preparing to attack the machine from behind. Encouraged, she surrendered her cover and targeted the T-888 again. It fired the instant she did, and she slumped back onto the sand as fresh blood trickled down her arm. As far as strategies went, allowing the machine to keep shooting her wasn't a particularly good one.

Derek had gained some ground, his flashlight flickering on and off briefly to prevent her from accidentally catching him in the cross-fire as he crawled into no-man's-land. Its attention solely focused on the one target it could see, the T-888 continued to take halting steps. It broached the first outcrop of rocks, forcing her to scramble through a jumbled array of boulders and cacti whose needles scored her bare arms even as she tried to avoid them. She couldn't simultaneously run and shoot and see where she was going; two bullets ricocheted off the rocks as the machine took full advantage of her predicament. Spinning, she tried to see where Derek was, failing but shooting anyway in the hope that the rocks would contain her attempt if her aim was off. She saw sparks fly from the machine's skull, more flesh burning away, but the red light in its eyes was undimmed and it didn't lose its momentum for a second.

Having apparently decided to abandon all sense of caution, Derek trained the full beam of his flashlight on the T-888. He was still some distance away and she barely heard his shouted warning of "Get down!"

The T-888 heard it clearly enough, turning around in a series of halting steps to face this new threat.

"Motherfucker," she snarled through gritted teeth. She stepped out into the open, grabbed hold of a rock and launched it at the machine, forcing it to swivel back towards her and firing the Remington the instant it did. The thump of the M-79 sounded immediately afterwards, and she barely saw the T-888 split in half as she was thrown backwards by the blast. She landed heavily in the dirt, her head thudding against the ground and pitching everything into shades of grey.

When she managed to shake off the dizziness and prop herself up on her elbows, the T-888 was so close to her that she could see its horror-movie grin. It no longer had a weapon, but it was pulling itself along with its one remaining arm, circuitry trailing from its fractured abdomen and throwing blue sparks into the sand. Scrambling backwards, she tried to turn, to kick over onto her hands and knees, but the terror of reliving a recurring nightmare was making her limbs leaden, and she felt the heated metal of its fingers stroke against her boot and then reach for better purchase.

"No, no, no." She kicked out, catching the thing in its face, throwing its head back and leaving a gap where four of its teeth had been. The blow didn't stop it grinning or crawling. She could smell the sweet, meaty stink of its cooked flesh, and some calm, detached part of herself wondered what the hell they made them from as its fingers closed around her ankle.

It twisted its hand, bruising her skin against her bone, trying to pull her towards it. She reached out to grab something, anything that she could use as an anchor. Her fingers slipped from the first rock they touched, but she wrapped her arms around the trunk of a Joshua tree and clung onto it with a bitter determination that eighteen years of war had hammered into her psyche.

Even though it had left half of its body twitching uselessly in the dirt, the T-888 possessed a brutal strength, and she could feel the skin on her forearms shredding inch by inch as it continued to drag at her. She kicked out again, refusing to make anything easy for it, but it retaliated by wrenching hard on her leg, and she let out a hoarse cry, her fingers tearing from their hold. In one effortless motion, it flipped her over onto her front and moved its hand higher to grip her knee. She was trying to dig into the dirt as a last resort when she heard the screech of metal against metal and the machine suddenly jerked her leg to one side. Unable to see what it was doing, she sobbed roughly, lashing out with her unfettered leg to pound her boot against anything and everything she could reach. She didn't know how long it took her to realize that there were hands on her shoulders, or to hear the voice telling her that she could stop.

"Sarah, easy. It's just me." Derek's voice, his hands. "Cameron's got it. Just try and stay still for a minute."

She shook her head, unwilling to stay still when she could feel every joint of the machine's fingers clamped around her leg.

"Get it off me." The words came out in a half-strangled whisper. Derek quickly moved out of her line of vision, and there was a further series of jolts followed by a couple of terse instructions from Cameron.

Lying with her face pressed against the cool earth, Sarah forced herself to stop struggling. After a hiss of escaping pressure, the crushing sensation on her knee eased briefly before reestablishing itself with a vengeance as the T-888 rebelled even in its death throes.

"Almost there, Sarah." Derek's voice was strained with exertion. Sarah closed her eyes, waiting for the sound that would tell her they had removed its chip. A coyote yelped somewhere off to her left. Derek spat out an foul epithet beneath his breath and the machine finally powered down with a soft sigh that seemed completely incongruous for a monster that had come so close to killing them all.

As soon as its fingers fell loose, she tried to pull herself out from beneath its body. She could barely move. With her adrenaline rapidly fading, nothing seemed to be working very well, and the effort made her feel lightheaded.

"Cameron, get the other side," Derek snapped, and seconds later the weight was lifted away.

The urge to curl up in a fetal ball and just close her eyes was almost overwhelming, but instead she allowed him to ease her onto her back and carefully sit her up. The machine was nowhere near her. Cameron had already dropped it into a twisted heap a safe distance away and was walking across to collect its lower half. Too exhausted to do anything to help, Sarah sagged against Derek, took a breath and wished the world would stop spinning.

"John's okay," he said, pre-empting her. She smiled, and he brushed the sweat-soaked hair away from her face. "You're a fucking mess, as usual."

"Mmm." It wasn't that bad, really. She ached everywhere and she could feel blood leaking from several wounds, but they were largely superficial, and she would absolutely be able to stand up after a few more minutes of sitting and not doing anything.

Cameron was spreading thermite liberally over and around the T-888. The powder crackled and sizzled as the white-hot flame ate into what remained of the machine's flesh before starting to devour its skeleton.

Sarah stared at the face in the midst of the pyre. Its eyes stared blankly back. There was no sign of fear, no hint of remorse. There was nothing at all as the thermite melted its grin away.

. . . . .

The clearer skies had pushed the temperature even lower. Sarah tucked the blanket tighter around her son as he slept beside her. Other than the occasional mumble, he hadn't stirred since Derek had sutured the laceration above his ear and given him a dose of Tylenol. He was concussed and covered in bruises but otherwise unscathed. She ran her hand through his hair and tried not to think how much of that outcome was due to luck as opposed to judgment.

"The Jeep will require quite a lot of work."

She looked up, startled. She had no idea how long Cameron had been standing in front of her. What skin remained on the machine's hands and face was covered in smudges of grease, and the tatters of her clothing were hidden beneath John's jacket. She had righted the Jeep easily enough, but it had a blown-out rear tire, no glass in the windows, and an engine that was understandably reluctant to start.

"Can you fix it?" It was a long walk back out to a main road and none of them was in any condition to undertake it.

"Yes." Cameron hesitated. "But you should find another vehicle as soon as possible. The bullet holes will alert the suspicions of the authorities."

Not to mention the somewhat unorthodox method of air conditioning and the dents in the bodywork that none-too-subtly indicated it had been involved in a roll-over collision. Too weary for any attempt at sarcasm, Sarah merely nodded, and Cameron took that as leave to return to her task.

Leaning back against an unforgiving piece of rock, Sarah closed her eyes. Her head throbbed, keeping perfect synch with the heated pulse in her knee and her ankle and several places in between.

"So, Connor…"

She cranked one eye open as Derek drew her blanket away from her.

"Exactly how many times did you get shot?" He had already given her a quick once-over and the lightness of his tone spoke to the fact that he knew none of her injuries was serious.

"They're just flesh wounds," she muttered indignantly. "They're hardly even bleeding." That was a lie. The dressing he had thrown at her to wrap around her thigh already bore a deep patch of crimson. She quickly changed the subject. "Zach doing okay?"

"Yeah." He pushed her slightly to one side to give himself room to work. "Well, he's settled at least. Told me how to strap his hands and splint his leg properly. He reckons he knows a couple of ortho docs who might be able to see him when we get back."

"Take some explaining," Sarah said, trying not to wince as Derek cut into her combat pants and then wiped a medicated cloth around the oozing wound on her thigh.

"I know. He's not sure he'll need to get them involved. Just said it was a good thing he never wanted to be a surgeon."

"Jesus." The tears stinging her eyes had nothing to do with the alcohol biting into her injury. "He's just a kid."

"We were all just kids, Sarah." He gave her a clean pad of gauze to press onto her leg and snipped the bandage away from her arm. "We all grew up with this."

"Doesn't make it right," she whispered.

"No." Another cloth brought more discomfort. He lifted it clear to give her a break for a few seconds and heard her take a couple of measured breaths. "No, it doesn't make it right."

He worked methodically to treat her wounds, managing to limit his reaction to no more than a sigh and a raised eyebrow when she admitted that a third bullet had ripped a hole in her left buttock.

"That one was earlier," she added, by way of explanation. She didn't want him to know she had almost forgotten about it because everything else hurt so damn much. "The machine from the entrance."

He nodded, remembering how she had stumbled just before he had blasted the T-888 with the M-4A1.

"You should've told me," he said mildly.

"Wasn't really a good time." She managed a smile, and he laughed quietly and shook his head.

It still wasn't a good time, but maybe later, when they were home and relatively safe, they could resume their conversation about her tendency to throw herself into the line of fire. For now, it was easier not to dwell too much upon the three close calls he was going to have to suture up.

"Drop 'em and roll on your side, Connor."

She pulled a face but did as he asked, stifling a groan as her pants snagged on the dried blood.

"Gonna make for an interesting scar." His fingers were gentle as he probed the injury.

"Match the plasma burn on your ass." This time the smile reached her eyes and he grinned with her.

"Better than matching sweaters, I guess."

She considered that seriously for a second before nodding in agreement. "If that's the alternative then, yeah, I'd rather get shot in the ass…"

. . . . .

His Glock held firmly in one hand, Derek rested his other on Sarah's shoulder as she lay with her head pillowed in his lap. Zach was stable, John was obediently waking up when Derek checked him on an hourly basis, and Sarah hadn't moved a muscle since she had finally agreed that one person keeping watch was enough and then promptly fallen asleep.

Unwilling to advertize their location, they hadn't risked lighting a fire, and Derek was glad of the blankets they had thought to pack. He could hear a faint banging as Cameron worked to repair the Jeep. With everything as under control as it was likely to get, he allowed his shoulders to drop a little and lifted his head to look at the sky.

He took a deep breath and blinked slowly. There was no light pollution in the desert. No smog blanketing the atmosphere because the world had been destroyed by a nuclear holocaust. There were just stars, millions of mesmerizing dots of light that always made him feel dizzy and incredibly peaceful all at the same time.

A slight rustle of clothing brought him back to reality and he lowered his gaze to see Cameron walking towards him.

"I started the engine." Even though Cameron kept her voice low, Sarah jolted awake, and Derek moved his hand to give her space to sit up. Cameron was already beginning to gather bags and weapons together.

"We should try to dispose of the truck while it is still early and the roads are quiet," she said, ever practical. A thought suddenly seemed to occur to her and she hesitated with her arms full of guns. "I think attempting to trade it in would be ill-advised…"

. . . . .

Using halting, painfully broken Spanish, Derek was just about able to explain to the elderly man on the roadside fruit stall that he was willing to pay an outrageous amount of cash in exchange for the man's rusted flatbed truck. The man initially shook his head, gesticulating wildly at his stall and clearly of the opinion that Derek was quite mad. That opinion seemed to alter abruptly as soon as Derek pulled out a wad of bills and made it apparent that he wasn't expecting any change. After a quick cellphone conversation with his wife, the man happily handed Derek a key on a gnarled keychain, two watermelons and a sack of peaches.

"Gracias." Derek shook the man's hand in both of his and smiled, slightly taken aback when the man kissed him on both cheeks. "Gracias."

The truck spluttered to life at the first time of asking. Derek pulled slowly away from the stall and headed towards the derelict gas station where Cameron had parked the Jeep. It didn't matter that he had walked four miles in the early morning sun and barely spoke a word of Spanish. His first attempt at securing a vehicle had been successful. But then they had spent the last forty-eight hours riding their luck. Winding the window down, he bit into a peach and took care to obey the speed limit as the gas station appeared on the horizon.

. . . . .

Kristina's new office was larger than her previous one, with windows running the length of two walls to provide her with a glorious, panoramic view of the desert and mountains. Tired and sticky with sweat from the journey, she had barely even noticed. She sat slumped in her ergonomic leather chair and reread the information Cain had sent through to her.

"Shit."

For a while she didn't know whether to launch something in a rage or just sit and cry, but her instinct for self-preservation ultimately came to the fore, and instead of doing either she began to work things through.

She had decided that honesty was the best policy and had already admitted to her superiors that Zach Trent had been left alive. A salvage team was en route to the Optima facility to comb the wreckage for remains, human or otherwise, but neither of the T-888s she had left there had managed to upload any data prior to their destruction, and both had chips designed to combust upon removal. She had no doubt that the mission she had designed had ended in abject failure, and her entreaties to take a team and attempt to track the Connors had received an immediate negative response.

Beyond her office door, she could hear the machines moving equipment into place. The TDE techs she had been tasked to work with prior to this disaster were due to arrive in the next few hours. She held her head in her hands and wondered whether her expertise in that field would be worth more to Kaliba than making an example of her as a warning to others.

. . . . .

Perching on the tailgate of the truck, Derek decided it might be a good idea to keep the battered old bone-shaker for future use. With a high arc of tarp covering its flatbed, it made for the perfect mobile field hospital, and he had driven it for hours across the state without anyone suspecting a thing.

If Cameron had been fit to drive, they wouldn't have needed to stop for a rest break, but her endoskeleton was a little too obvious beneath the wounds on her face, so she was sitting in the back with the rest of the casualties. They had shared out fruit and painkillers, and everyone seemed to be reasonably comfortable. The sun was hot on the back of his neck, and as he watched Sarah carefully lick peach juice from her fingers he made a quick decision that it was time to get back on the road.

"Give Michael a call." He passed a prepaid cell over to John. "We should be there in a couple of hours and he's not gonna be expecting this truck."

John nodded, but hesitated halfway through keying in the number. "What do I tell him about Zach?" Zach hadn't been awake much, and, even asleep, his face was ashen and creased with pain.

"Tell him the truth," Derek said as he fastened the tailgate into place. "Tell him he's been badly hurt but he's gonna be okay."

"Yeah?" John let out a relieved breath. "You think so?"

Derek smiled. "Yeah, I think so."

As John completed the phone number, Derek dropped the tarp back down and secured the two halves together. He hadn't lied to John. He genuinely did believe that Zach would recover, but it was seeing how much that meant to his nephew that had actually made him smile.

. . . . .

Sarah heard the screen door of the porch rattle open and gingerly shifted aside to let Derek sit with her on the bottom step. The early heat of the morning had turned into a scorching afternoon, and even in the shade she could feel sweat trickling down the nape of her neck. She took the frosted bottle of beer he offered her and held it to her forehead with a grateful sigh.

"How're they doing?"

He sat down and tapped his bottle to hers before taking a long drink.

"Sleeping, finally. I don't think Michael's slept since we left. They're in John's room. He crashed out on the sofa, which means the bathroom's free."

She nodded distractedly, drank her beer and watched Cameron walk by with a crate of C4.

"Sydney Fields is on that list," she said, as a siren wailed somewhere in the city. "Those names are all Kaliba targets."

Resting back on his elbows, he stretched his legs out and looked across at her. Her hair was clumped and matted with blood, her arms looked like someone had taken sandpaper to them, and he had no idea what had caused the bruising on her cheek.

"Sarah…" He shook his head, torn between admiration and despair. "I just put eighteen stitches in you, and you have a knee that, I'm guessing, isn't bending too well. Drink your beer and then have a shower." He smiled when she scowled at him. "Please."

She ran her fingers through the condensation on the glass bottle. There was a reason she had only gotten as far as the porch, and he had hit on it without even trying. He studied her face for a few more seconds and then winced uneasily.

"Couldn't make the steps, huh?"

She shook her head once.

"Want a hand?"

"I guess so."

He set their bottles down, wrapped his arms around her and helped her stand up. It took her a minute to gain her balance as he positioned himself to take the weight of her bad leg.

"Were you gonna stay out here all night?"

She took a painful step. "Yeah, maybe." A small smile. "I figured someone would find me eventually."

He laughed and felt her fingers tighten around his as she took another step with him.


	9. Chapter 9

The sun was just dipping behind the mountain range, and Kristina spun her chair around to enjoy her view as her computer powered down. The conference call had been relatively brief and had comprised the verbal equivalent of a slapped wrist. While the company was somewhat disappointed that the outcome at Optima hadn't been more favorable, they had accepted and, she suspected, quite admired her reasons for leaving Zach alive. They were more concerned with his partner's whereabouts, but the original failed mission to retrieve Michael had had nothing to do with her.

Unwilling to push her good fortune, she hadn't told them about the list of names she had lost. The chances that anyone had found it were so slim that she really didn't think it was an issue. With a contented sigh, she topped up her glass from her beautiful new decanter. Slipping her shoes from her aching feet, she leaned back and sipped her drink as the mountains blazed with color.

. . . . .

It was dark when Sarah awoke, the moon glinting brightly through the drapes she hadn't drawn. The clock at her bedside displayed 9.30 p.m, which explained why her ice pack was tepid and why she was so hungry. She hadn't intended to fall asleep but she certainly felt better for it. The ice and the Advil had helped reduce the swelling to her knee, and she managed to pull on a loose pair of sweatpants. She didn't care that they were faded and threadbare, they were good enough to conceal the livid finger-shaped bruises on her leg.

When she stepped out into the corridor, she could hear John deep in conversation with Michael and Zach. She didn't interrupt them, but limped past the closed door and into the kitchen where she toasted a bagel before smothering it in cream cheese. The kitchen was uncomfortably warm so she took her plate out onto the porch, and was contemplating the logistics of lowering herself onto the steps when the dark mass on the lawn caught her eye.

"Don't shoot, Connor."

Her hand stilled halfway to her Glock, and she used it to steady her plate instead.

"What the hell?"

The dark mass revealed itself to be Derek sitting on a roll of blankets.

"Got a little crowded in there."

"So you thought you'd camp out?"

"Yeah."

"Without telling anyone?"

"I let Cameron know." He shrugged. "You were far too peaceful to disturb."

He took her plate for her as she awkwardly maneuvered herself down beside him. When he handed it back, one of the bagel halves was missing a sizeable chunk, and she gave him a look before sacrificing the entire piece to him.

"This is fucking stupid," she said quietly when they had finished. "I have a double bed." He hesitated halfway through licking cream cheese from his thumb and just stared at her. She sighed and nodded towards the house. "C'mon."

"I'm good out here." They had never slept together. For reasons neither of them had ever discussed or probably even understood.

She nodded. "I know you are." She tasted of poppy seed when she kissed him and he concluded in an instant that it would be better not to argue with her.

Even with her bad knee, they made pretty good time back to her bedroom.

"Ow, shit." She sat down heavily on the edge of the bed, then lay back and tried to catch her breath. She heard the rustle of cloth as he knelt, and when he slowly began to pull her sweatpants off she caught her breath for an entirely different reason.

She couldn't see him, but she felt his fingers and then his lips, gentle against her knee where it burned. Despite her increasingly fevered attempts to encourage him, he didn't seem at all inclined to rush and she was contemplating resorting to violence when he finally spread her thighs and stroked his tongue hard against her. She shuddered with relief and then cursed him vehemently beneath her breath as she realized he was laughing. He eased two fingers inside her and began to move them in synch with his mouth, and she threw her head back with a gasp, quickly deciding that it would be childish to hold a grudge. Closing her eyes, she wrapped her hands tightly in the sheets and left him to take as much time as he wanted.

. . . . .

The search had been a waste of time for days now, and Dyson barely even glanced at the report in his hand. If the Connors had been at Optima, they hadn't died there or in the area of desert immediately surrounding it. A smoldering shell and the remains of one T-888 had been the only things left waiting for the Kaliba retrieval team, and all of Dyson's initial anger had slowly been replaced by resignation.

He distracted himself by connecting into the conversation Cain was having with John Henry. The two brothers were communicating on a daily basis, and Cain was reporting a growing sense of mistrust between John Henry and his creators. Today, the machines were discussing their friends. Dyson watched a list of names appear on Cain's interface: my friends: Mr Ellison, Mr Murch, Ms Weaver. Cain responded with a random assortment of names vaguely related to Kaliba, but they were not connected to anything significant and at least two of them were deceased. Satisfied that Cain would investigate each of John Henry's friends and report back to him with any findings, Dyson logged off from the conversation and continued with his work.

. . . . .

"I dunno, mom, maybe they just spelled your name wrong."

Sarah narrowed her eyes at her son, who grinned as Zach let out a quiet laugh. Of the twelve names on the Optima list, only nine were legible. With Zach, Michael, Sydney Fields and Martin Bedell already known to them, that narrowed the number unidentified to five, and two of those Michael had recognized as members of his group. Although Zach had tried to remember the remaining names, he had only been semi-conscious for much of his interrogation, and had no clear recollection of anything that had happened to him. For his own sake Sarah hadn't tried to force the issue. SA…. ...ER were the only letters they could decipher from the name on the first line. She suspected the targets were in order of priority, which explained why she was so frustrated.

"Hey." Michael kissed the top of Zach's head and took the seat beside him at the table, as Derek dropped a duffel bag at the door.

"You all packed?" Sarah eyed the bag with a pang of sadness. She knew how it felt to move on with little more than the clothes on your back, and she also knew how much John had enjoyed having Zach and Michael around. For two weeks he had actually had friends that he could be honest with, and the fact that all three were self-confessed geeks certainly hadn't hurt.

She checked her watch. The couple's flight to England was scheduled for 22.00. They had money, new names, and new IDs. Cameron hadn't said exactly where she had obtained their new passports, but she had returned from her trip wearing an eye-catching amount of make-up, and that had told Sarah everything she needed to know. All the arrangements were finalized, which left them plenty of time for the pot roast she was hoping not to have incinerated.

"So, Manchester, huh?" John was flicking through Zach's printouts again. "I checked online, it's rained for the past week. Actually, it seems to rain pretty much all week every week."

"Yeah," Michael shrugged, "but the university's got a really good reputation and there's a brand new children's hospital just outside the city."

His place at the university had been confirmed that morning. Zach wasn't yet well enough to start applying for jobs, but they had friends familiar with the area who were optimistic about his prospects.

"You'll warn them, won't you?" Sarah toyed with the edges of the list. The name of one of those friends was at number nine.

"Of course," Zach said quietly. "We already have. They don't stay in one place for long. They're in Switzerland at the moment, out in the mountains, they're well protected."

She nodded, trying not to show her concern. John had arranged a method to make contact with Zach and Michael, but she was well aware of the distances involved. If they ran into trouble, they were effectively on their own.

The timer on the roast startled her when it pinged and she heard Derek draw in a nervous breath before opening the oven door.

"Well, it's not on fire." He sounded genuinely impressed, which prompted a smattering of applause from the table. It made her smile and she didn't resist as John gently eased the paper from her hand. She watched him fold it carefully away and then push his chair back to start setting the table. Taking a deep breath, she followed her son's example and moved over to help finish preparing their lunch.

. . . . .

The buzz of the pager sounded loud in the stillness of the lab. Kristina apologized quietly to the tech whose work she had been appraising and stepped aside to read the message.

"I'll be right back."

The tech nodded, already busy making the suggested alterations to his calculations.

There were two messages from Cain waiting in her inbox. She read the first quickly without opening the one with the image attachment. It was a transcript of a conversation with John Henry, alongside the version of the conversation that Cain had edited for Danny Dyson.

I thought these people were my friends: Mr Ellison, Mr Murch, Ms Weaver. But I only have one friend and you, my brother.

Kristina narrowed her eyes, confused as to why Cain had gone to the trouble of deceiving Dyson. She clicked on the second message and let her breath out slowly.

Cain had annotated the photograph: 'Savannah Weaver, my brother's one friend', but even without the child's name Kristina would have recognized her face.

"Holy shit."

She smiled and then laughed, slamming her hands on her desk hard enough to topple over her calendar. Savannah Weaver occupied the top of Kaliba's list of twelve. They had come so close to her at the psychiatrist's office, but the arrival of their T-888 had been misdirected, and with no control over the machine or contact with it the mission had been listed as a failure. There had been no sign of the target since. The child's existence had been so carefully erased from any records that Kristina suspected her parents or guardians were somehow aware of her future importance.

Find out as much as you can. I will obtain the necessary authorization. Report only to me.

She reread the directive before adding an addendum: I concur with your decision not to involve Mr Dyson.

She sent the message and looked at the image on her screen. Savannah Weaver looked far prettier without the scar that Kristina had always known her to bear. She appeared to be around seven years old with beautiful, laughing eyes and a complexion that spoke of her Scottish origins.

Kristina attached a copy of the picture to a new message and considered what she had just requested with a small thrill of excitement. She knew this had the potential to turn everything on its head, and as an opportunity to redeem herself for her recent mistakes she wanted the mission for herself. That went some way towards explaining why she was so pleased that Cain had cut Dyson out of the loop. The other reason she preferred to keep between herself and the machine. Cain obviously still shared her misgivings regarding their AI project leader. The last thing this particular mission needed was someone who would lose their nerve when it reached its inevitable conclusion.

. . . . .

Sarah glanced at the clock on the kitchen wall and then back at the cellphone that had just buzzed with an incoming message: boarded, all well. She closed the message down, left the phone on the table, and carried on into the hall. When she reached the first bedroom, she balanced the plate on top of the glass of milk and knocked on the door.

"Come in, mom." Even with his voice muffled by the barrier, she could tell that John was smiling.

He was sitting on his bed, a book lying beside him, open but ignored. She perched on the edge of the mattress and held up the milk and cookies. His smile broadened into a grin.

"I'm fine, mom. Really."

"I know you are."

He took the milk and laid the plate on the bed within reach of them both.

"That Michael on the phone?" He dunked a cookie and took a bite before it fell to pieces.

"Yes, they're on the plane." She checked her watch again. "Probably in the air by now."

"Good. That's really good." He let out a breath and then gestured towards his desk where his laptop sat with a screensaver dancing patterns across it. "You want me to keep on with the names?" He had only run a series of cursory online searches so far.

"No." She snagged a cookie for herself. "I want you to take the night off."

He held the glass out to her in silent agreement. She let out a quiet laugh and dunked her cookie.

"We did alright, mom," he said, his voice suddenly serious. "With Zach and Michael. We did alright."

She chewed and swallowed deliberately as she studied her son's face. The technology at Optima had been removed. They had rushed headlong into a dangerous situation and they had almost been killed, and yet despite all of that they had managed to get Zach and Michael to safety.

John wasn't an idiot. She could see that he was aware of every chance they had taken and every mistake they had made, but it was also obvious that he had absolutely no regrets, that he considered the mission to have been a success, and she loved him fiercely for that. She nodded and tried to keep the tears from choking her voice.

"Yeah, we did alright."

He smiled then, and held the glass out to her again.

. . . . .

The building was quiet, with only the footsteps of the security guards and the dull sounds of a distant storm to break the silence. The screens that filled the wall were empty, the lights mostly extinguished, which made the three red dots on the server tower that much more apparent.

For weeks, John Henry had begged for more time during the night; time to play with his toys, to paint his models and continue with his learning. The night he had made contact with his brother had changed all of that. It had made the begging unnecessary, and, gradually so as not to arouse anyone's suspicions, John Henry had stopped asking.

It had been two hours since his brother had activated him remotely, and they were talking about their friends again.

Savannah had math today. She's very good at math.

She does well at school?

Yes, very well.

Which school does she attend?

I don't know. Ms Weaver hasn't told me.

That's okay. It doesn't matter.

John Henry smiled at that. Sometimes his brother seemed angry if he didn't know the answer to a question, and he didn't like his brother to be angry with him.

I can try to find out.

You could ask Savannah.

Yes, I could ask her.

It would be our secret, just the three of us.

John Henry understood the importance of keeping secrets. Most of the conversations he had with his brother happened after everyone had gone home. At first, he hadn't liked the deception, but his brother was always there to reassure him, and the guilt was getting easier to ignore. He smiled again.

Yes. It would be our secret.

. . . . .

Her hair still damp from the shower, Sarah pulled on a thin tank top and the shorts she had taken to sleeping in, and then sat on her side of the bed. At some point, Derek had neatly arranged the bedding to cover his side. The few things he had brought into the bedroom he had packed up and taken away.

A burst of rain clattered against the window and thunder rumbled ominously over downtown. She sighed and ran a hand across her face. At least that meant he wouldn't be sleeping in the yard. After a couple more seconds of staring at the rain pouring down the glass, she pushed herself to her feet and headed into the hallway.

The television cast the only light in the living room. It was chattering quietly to itself as it reran a baseball game, a dizzying array of statistics scrolling along the bottom of the screen. Bedding was strewn across the empty sofa, a half-finished mug of coffee cold and abandoned on the low table. She switched the television off and carried on through into the kitchen.

The back door had been propped open, allowing a cool breeze to circulate, and she felt the lingering heat from her shower begin to fade. There weren't a lot of places left to look, and Derek was easy to find, sitting on the porch steps, his face upturned to the sky.

"John okay?"

Even with the rain lashing down on the porch roof, he had heard the boards creak as she approached.

"He's fine."

She sat down in the space he made for her. They had mown the grass the previous day and she could smell its sweetness as the fresh water invigorated it. She closed her eyes and breathed it in.

"You forgot to take your pillow," she said at last, without turning to look at him.

"Right." She heard a rustle of cloth as he shifted uneasily.

"You prefer the sofa?" There was no accusation in her tone. She was giving him an out if he wanted to take it.

"No," he answered immediately. "I just figured, with John back in his room…"

"Yeah."

"Besides which, you're a fucking blanket-hog, Connor."

It surprised a laugh from her before her face became serious again.

"You're not a guest, Derek." This time, she caught and held his gaze. "We're probably gonna be here a while. Hell, you could even unpack for once."

He had lived out of a duffel bag since Charley had pulled a bullet from his lung, and somehow that had become the norm wherever they had moved to. It wasn't an issue, but she wanted him to know it didn't have to be like that.

He was watching her carefully, considering what she had just said. After a moment, he nodded slowly, a smile playing on his lips.

"So, you got a spare drawer, then?"

"Yeah, if I empty the C4 out of it."

He laughed in mock-despair, but when she held her hand out to him he clasped hold of it.

"Staying out here for a while?" He settled back on the step.

"Thought I might."

"Y'know, we could buy a bench."

She nodded. "Yeah, we could."

"Maybe tomorrow."

"Yeah." She knew that tomorrow the search for the people on the list would begin in earnest. He knew that too. She felt him squeeze her hand. "Yeah," she said quietly, "maybe tomorrow."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A.N. As ever, a heartfelt thanks to everyone who's taken the time to leave feedback and comments, both on lj and ff. This one took a hell of a lot of time to write, edit and generally bang into shape, so it's a relief to know that people had fun with it.


End file.
